


City of Fallen Angels: (2) Blackout

by Elysiummm



Series: California By Night [2]
Category: Original Work, Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (Video Game), World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Romance, Angst and Tragedy, Awkward Romance, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gay Male Character, Ghouls, M/M, Malkavian Madness Network, Manipulation, Murder, No Heroes, POV Lesbian Character, POV Multiple, Political Alliances, Tragedy, vampires keep secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 52
Words: 289,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26700637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elysiummm/pseuds/Elysiummm
Summary: December 2003. Los Angeles is under siege. A traditionalist faction of Camarilla, led by the enigmatic Jan Pieterzoon, cunning Victoria Ash, and the once-Anarch Prince Bartholomew Vaughn, has taken the Valley and looks to the rest of the city. Brewing in Westside, Sebastian LaCroix has brokered an alliance with the Voerman sisters and claimed his own crown. What remains of the fractured Anarchs squabble, terrified, and Nines’ Downtown barony hangs together with duct tape and promises. In the dark and dank, Sabbat stir and Tremere plot.Four vampires tell the story of the cold war struggle over Los Angeles. Matthew Monroe, the Ventrue leader over a growing independent faction in Central LA. Jack Shen, a Gangrel with ties to Downtown and a mage lover who is more ruthless than he imagined. Charlie Bradley, a Malkavian fledgling who begins to explore her identity and place in the night. Zari, a Toreador infiltrator in Prince LaCroix’s court who can’t let her past go.Blackout is a novel of personal horror and political intrigue. When the lights go out, all of us are left alone with our shadows.Takes place before Bloodlines. COMPLETED!
Series: California By Night [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813321
Comments: 42
Kudos: 40





	1. Prologue: The Red Star

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story primarily ABOUT OCs. Every tagged canon character is a side or supporting character to one of the main OCs.
> 
> Summary, as done by POVs:
> 
> Monroe might’ve secured independence for himself, building a domain in Central LA with the untrustworthy Ashley Swan, but the walls are closing in. His debt to Pieterzoon remains unsettled. Refugees from the burgeoning cold war pour in, eyeing each other with suspicion on the brink of a civil war. Miss Hawthorne, a winter ghoul he sired upon her death, brims with loathing and returns to him, but not of her choice. His decades old friendship with Bartholomew Vaughn is tested. And the Ventrue Beast eyes Monroe’s increasing power with a greedy eye.
> 
> Jack and his long-time mage lover Ryuko are more married than any ceremony could make them. As Jack finds himself putting out fires across the city, he recognises the signs. Ryuko has found new friends in the vampire community, ones who seem to be perfect, have all the answers, and even a neat ideology to wrap it up. Facing being alone for the first time in decades, Jack struggles to put together who he is. Downtown’s iron facade cracks on the seams, as the Sabbat leak from East LA. 
> 
> Zari learned to run when her fangs grew in. She fled her cruel foster sire, Ashley Swan, her sire’s gang, and her human family. And now, Ashley offers to fix their messy relationship and her daughter, Aisha, has been Embraced. As Aisha adjusts, she brings horrible news from the mortal family. Ashley speaks gravely of the war to come. Zari does what she has always done: bury her feelings and run. She offers to infiltrate the Westside Prince’s court for Monroe, who accepts it at face value. She relies on old Anarch instincts, to make herself indispensable to survive, but finds herself diving deeper into the Camarilla court. Unfortunately, everywhere she runs, she discovers she has gotten there first. 
> 
> Charlie tentatively believes the worst is behind her. All ties have been severed with her human life. The nightmare is over. In the peace, though, she has to face what she did. Her sire and murderer, Rhys Wilson, has lost everything because of her. Carrying the guilty secret, she attempts to mend bridges. The famed vampire hunter, Jesse Harper, for all her brooding mystery, holds her own immense pain. Together, Charlie begins to explore her sexuality — though she might’ve bitten off more than she can chew.
> 
> \------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Adult Content warning. City of Fallen Angels is my baby, but it can be an ugly one. It's predominantly character-driven and filled with personal horror, with a background of the traditional political intrigue, but reader discretion is advised.
> 
> References / Implied: sire/childe abuse, Dominate/Presence use, human trafficking, substance abuse, prostitution, homo/transphobic violence, suicide.
> 
> Explicit: POV death (prologue only), Dominate/Presence use, blood drinking, blood bonds, canon-typical violence, guns, alcohol and drinking, murder, emotional abuse, mental illness, dissociation, hallucination.
> 
> None: rape, sexual abuse

Sutton had always loved the night sky. As a boy, he gazed into the heavens and dreamed being among the stars. In his day, such notions were pure fantasy. But then the kine had fancied themselves rockets and airplanes and other flying machines. When he cared to amuse himself, Sutton would dream of being the first kindred to be among the stars. Of course, it only would be proper to have a Toreador be the first of Caine’s kind on the moon.

Tonight, he was far less certain.

Sutton spent a great many nights star-gazing. Unlike most Toreadors, who directed their gifts towards Presence, he adored Auspex. It brought the thousand-thousand nuances of the blue ink sky and illuminated the stars in even the brightest cities. The Toreador curse enraptured him in warm layers of grave obsession — sometimes until morning. He could spy the rings of Saturn, count the craters on the moon, and even spot Venus at the break of day.

Tonight, he could scarce stand it.

He contented himself with mundane senses. Los Angeles’ lights stole away much of the sky’s luster. Still, a few notable stars could be seen.

This was not something he could bring to Sebastian, as much as he desired. LaCroix was the practical sort — a Ventrue in stone and spirit. He did not entertain notions of fantasy and prophecy. Neither did Sutton. He had made his living as an architect, spending days and weeks in cities until his firm’s projects were completed. His life was a drawing board, facts and figures and equations.

Sutton stood on the rooftop of a Santa Monica skyscraper LaCroix had commandeered. A trio of modern art statues flanked him, faces worn to uncanny featureless smoothness. Their necks tilted to the sky and Sutton wondered if they, too, saw it. What would they say, if they could speak? He had come up, as he did every night, with a glass of melancholic waif vintage to start his night.

The Red Star ruined it all.

With Auspex, it was so clear Sutton had thought it a helicopter at first. The closer he looked, the more his powers zoomed in on it, the more it was all he could see. He knew every star in the night sky, named them himself over his nineteen decades. This was new. He had never seen a star half as red, that colour bright as fresh blood, as flame, as sunrise. A great red pit opened up in the heavens, not a glowing star but a bottomless red void. It was an omen for vampires, of hunger and death.

Sutton shook his head again. What was he coming to? Omens of doom and talking statues? Was it finally his time, to fall prey to the pretty flights of fancy that devoured so many of his clan? Hungry stars and omens of Gehenna.

Nonsense. 

And yet.

Thinbloods had risen in greater numbers. The new prince of Sydney was Caitiff. The reclusive Ravnos clan devoured each other in diablerie frenzy, leading the clan to extinction. The lupines of Vancouver had broken their treaty with Prince Siegfried and hunted in the city. All said it was stupid to treat with the wolves, but it had held for a century. And now it had broken. Now, of all times.

What were they, if not omens?

Sutton had scoffed when kindred of Belfast had grown frantic over an eclipse. Perhaps older kindred were not as well versed in common cosmic events. Sutton delighted in educating them, though none appreciated his efforts. He wondered, now, if he would be so laissez-faire if the sun blackened and he awoke during the day.

Perhaps what LaCroix needed, truly, was a bit of myth, ghost stories to entertain him as he  _ plotted _ . There was no other word for it. Sutton’s good old friend had always been ambitious and slick, and now he had his chance. LaCroix had run into him first in his home of Dublin, nearer a century ago. It was a familiar story. Ventrue had money. Toreador had dreams. Hand met glove, as such things tended to do. Sutton could never have said he was brilliant, but his architecture firm added a certain wealth to LaCroix’s foundation, permitted him regular travel, and that was enough for them. They met again occasionally, never for long enough, and always parting on fond terms. Even in the last hundred years, Sutton could count the times he had seen dear Sebastian laugh. He was a miserable man and married to an ambition that always fucked him and never pleasured him.

The door opened behind him and Sutton smelled the ghoul. Not by blood, but by cologne. He was LaCroix’s current favourite, a former mafia hitman he had snatched clean from the Giovanni in New York.

“Come to enjoy the view?” asked Sutton.

Mercurio stepped closer and shrugged impassively. He had a wiry build, more suited for crawling through air ducts than smashing teeth in, but LaCroix found a use for him. He still wore paisley and gold chains. Coarse features turned awkward under a shock of dark hair.

“LaCroix sent you,” Sutton guessed. He took a sip from his glass.

“Not… really, sir,” said Mercurio. He ground his teeth. “Figured you’d want to know anyhow, though. Just got the driver to take the big man out to LAX — with friends, you know. Ms Voerman, the Sheriff…”

There were no other friends.

Except for Sutton.

Sutton drank what remained of his vintage and, very patiently, counted to ten. The insult was not Mercurio’s fault. LaCroix wouldn’t appreciate him slapping his assistant.

“Take me,” said Sutton coldly.

“That’s just why I’m here, sir.”

They left the tower and Sutton slid into the backseat of his town car. The Red Star, unseen, burned into his back.

What few of LaCroix’s fine friends had joined him in Los Angeles. Whether together they summed as a court was another matter. Every night, Sutton and that Malkavian’s sister had been heading out into local nightlife, trying to get a read on the local Anarchs. Many seemed receptive to Camarilla rule, surprisingly. Toreadors craving culture. Malkavians needing structure. Caitiff who had no idea there was  _ a society _ waiting to welcome them. All while LaCroix bolted himself away and schemed a way for the rest of Los Angeles and a way to depose that imposter prince.

LaCroix must’ve made a mistake leaving him out. Just a mistake. One hundred years of friendship insisted it was a mistake.

Two weeks of being in Los Angeles told him otherwise.

The road disappeared under the car, too fast by far. Signs advertising the airport began to appear, streaking by the window.

“Who’s coming?” asked Sutton. “Who’re they meeting with?”

“A Tremere,” said Mercurio. “Old World. I’m talking, ‘had a seat at Thorns’ kind of old.”

Sutton grimaced. “Strauss.”

“That might’ve been it, yeah.”

LaCroix must’ve thought things were desperate. Sutton had thought they were going good, as a matter of fact. Their disconnect and lack of communication only stoked the quiet fires of his anger. Any kindred that old was a wild card. Strauss hadn’t only been at the Convention of Thorns. He was older, even. Six centuries, maybe. That amount of time — devoted to magic and the Pyramid and Caine knew what else Tremere did in those chantries — could only make Strauss less trustworthy. LaCroix didn’t think that far ahead, of course. He saw a weapon. One that  _ she  _ had offered. Who knew how she had acquired such favour with such a Tremere.

Mercurio pulled off from the public roads that led into LAX, driving instead back around the flat tarmac. Even in the black of night, airplanes took off and landed eagerly. Carts pulled along luggage and orange safety lights blinked everywhere. When Sutton spotted the mismatched trio by the hanger, he knew he had been wrong to come.

Sutton gave Mercurio the blessing of just dropping him off. There was no sense in giving LaCroix a vulnerable object for his own rages.

Of the three kindred, one was almost monstrous in proportion. He was a truly vast creature, scarcely notable as having been once a human man. A coat draped over him like a tarp. The Sheriff had always been called such, a South African mute with whom LaCroix shared a more intimate understanding than with nearly anyone. 

The Malkavian woman Sutton knew to have the ability of beauty, though she did not oft exercise it. Slender limbs, a cold doll-like face, and flaxen hair strangled into a bun. She wore severe and unflattering business clothes and a special look of loathing she reserved for Sutton alone. LaCroix had come across her business first in Chicago, decades ago. He did not have the charm or power to buy friends, so he did with money. Now, with the promise of power, the associate had become his seneschal. Sutton held his tongue. He knew the title belonged rightfully to him, though. Of that alone, Sutton remained jealous.

LaCroix, at least, had no obvious mark of displeasure. “Sutton,” he said, as though he had expected him. There was no warmth there; there seldom was any.

“Your Highness,” said Sutton amicably.

LaCroix returned his eye to the sky as he scanned the heavens for the plane. Sutton still struggled to think of his friend Sebastian as his prince. At his best, LaCroix could sport dry humour and an indulgent smile. Most times, though, he was sullen and crafty. Over the years, his lips had greyed and skin grown whiter and more powdery until it resembled chalk. Deep bony hollows in his cheeks darkened, sharp lines to match the cut of a widow’s peak in his fine honeyed hair. His tie could’ve been used as a ruler and Sutton knew that a large part of Mercurio’s job was running to the dry cleaner’s.

“I knew you would come, poseur, even if you were unwanted,” said Voerman with a sniff.

Sutton looked to LaCroix when he answered, “Tremere rarely travel alone. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t come with a boat-load of apprentices.”

“I am touched by the concern,” said one who had never been touched in his life, “and I appreciate your presence.”

It was more than Sutton had expected and so, he took it.

LaCroix folded his hands and Sutton, familiar with his pauses, knew what he would say before it was said. “And, Marcus, I do believe it will be a ‘plane-load’ of apprentices, unless you have reason to believe they will dock at the harbour and we must scamper quickly.”

“No, sir, I do not.”

Sutton gave him a smile. LaCroix absorbed it and, though his lips remained tight and tense, reflected it back.

They waited in stilted silence for minutes longer. Sutton strained his vision and regretted it. The Red Star waited for him, glowing vibrant on the horizon. And, then a small private plane. He relayed the number on the tail to LaCroix, who visibly relaxed. When it landed with a bump and squeak, a member of the airport’s staff rolled along a staircase for the Tremere to descend.

Sutton had only ever heard of Maximillian Strauss, a Tremere whose nationality could be best described as a citizen of the Fiefs of the Black Cross. The kindred state predated the Camarilla, though it, too, was ruled by the Lord Hardestadt across lands what became Scandinavia and central Europe. Strauss had ruled as a high apprentice in chantries across the Old World. There, however, even six centuries wasn’t enough to be declared regent.

Just as a Ventrue of two centuries was scarce able to rule.

Strauss descended with seven apprentices. Each wore red, as many Tremere tended to do. The youngest ones wore black suits, red only in their shirts or ties. Strauss wore a crimson wool trenchcoat with a small pair of red-tinted glasses over his nose. The regent carried a terrible aura with him. He had that look Sutton recognised from too many Old World kindred: like he had seen the Egyptian pyramids rise and fall and everyone else was merely dust. Even LaCroix. Especially LaCroix.

Sutton guarded his thoughts carefully around Strauss, but he couldn’t shake the feeling it had been a terrible idea to call him in.

Voerman stepped forward. “Regent Maximillian Strauss of Clan Tremere, might I introduce Prince Sebastian LaCroix of the Clan of Kings, Eighth of the Line of Tiamat, Warden of Westside.”

Strauss’s impassive face gave nothing away. Yet, he did step forward and knelt to kiss LaCroix’s ring.

“My prince,” he said in a deep, accented voice, “my apprentices and I do humbly thank you for the chance to join you and the Camarilla in this new land of opportunity.” He brought forward his apprentices, naming each of them as they, too, each fell to a knee to address the prince. 

Seven in all. Seven in red. Three men, four women.

Red like the star that burned above them.

Even without Auspex, it stared. And judged. And waited.

Sutton almost missed LaCroix’s words of greeting until the group split away. Voerman took the Tremere in a separate waiting car. LaCroix and the Sheriff moved towards another. Without asking, Sutton joined LaCroix in the backseat. He met the brief flash of annoyance head-on, before LaCroix indicated to the Sheriff that he should begin to drive.

“I did not ask for your counsel nor your presence tonight,” said LaCroix stiffly. He refused to look at Sutton.

“You’ve never asked. Doesn’t mean you’re not interested.” Heedless, he ploughed on. “As much as I admire your attempts to bottle hurricanes, Strauss is—”

“—exactly what I need,” he finished. “The wider Camarilla, even when I destroy the Valley’s imposter, will never accept my rule without a token kindred of far greater age and power.” His stony expression and voice soured with sarcasm. “A mere Ventrue of two centuries is insufficient to rule. He must be accompanied by another, more storied, more trustworthy case. Strauss is my concession to the sect. I do not need your baseless concerns.”

Sutton stared at LaCroix like he saw him rightfully for the first time. “You’d never concede to anything.”

His lack of compromise, in fact, was a large reason why LaCroix had never settled down in any particular city and, despite his age, had never amassed power. It was never good enough for him.

“She told you this,” said Sutton. He did not need to elaborate.

The twitch of a jaw muscle told him he was right.

“How did she get such a Tremere to fly here on a moment’s notice?” he demanded. “What does she owe him? Strauss—”

“The Valley Prince has at least one archon to validate his rule,” said LaCroix bitterly. “But he does not have magic. This advantage will be crucial to crushing our enemies.”

Sutton slid a hand across his own face, disbelieving. “How did she talk you into this?”

“It does not matter if good counsel comes from a squirrel or a methuselah, if it is good counsel.”

“And when it comes from a power-hungry Malkavian Anarch, what then?” snapped Sutton. “Who, then, is the squirrel?”

LaCroix turned to him and Sutton knew he had overstepped his mark. This was his prince.

“I apologize, sir,” he said, but it was too little. LaCroix had an exceptional memory.

“Perhaps there ought be a difference between those I consider acquaintances and those with the insight and temperament to sit a court,” he said icily.

“Friends,” said Sutton, bored at LaCroix’s fangless insults. “I’ll take ‘acquaintances’ as an insult, thank you.”

Ventrue didn’t have hearts. It was Toreadors’ job to remind them.

“Take it however you want,” said LaCroix with a bite. “You will regardless, I am sure.”

The Sheriff continued to drive in silence, taking far longer than Mercurio had. Sutton wondered if it was intentional to force him to think on his position. It worked.

“I’m trying to look out for you, Sebastian,” he said in confession. “You are finally where you are supposed to be, I understand that—”

“You understand little and less,” said LaCroix. His thin voice cracked like a whip. “I am absolutely nowhere, perhaps, even, a station less secure than what I had in New York. Simply declaring myself prince is insufficient—”

“There is plenty of work left to accomplish,” said Sutton with a sigh. “But, we are on track. Westside has accepted you, better than anyone could have predicted. That Amble brood sees power, too, and you like their patriarch as keeper of elysium. Everything is going smoothly. I promise.”

LaCroix’s eyes bored twin holes into him and Sutton felt the lick of Prescence as LaCroix’s anger got the better of him. Fear slid down his spine, burning like fire.

“Do not ever interrupt me again, Marcus,” he said softly.

Sutton swallowed the rest of his assurances. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Satisfied with his silence, LaCroix lapsed back into his own. Sutton resisted rolling his eyes; LaCroix had eyes in the back of his head and would know. Ventrue were always prickly and LaCroix could be one of the worst. But he wasn’t always like this. While he did continue to scheme and have devious machinations for power and social domination, LaCroix also knew how to have fun. Their years in New York proved it. Art galleries, Broadway shows, nightclubs. Sutton had thought moving into LaCroix’s tower could help revive some of their old friendship. But Sutton had taken his time coming to LA and found another had gotten to LaCroix’s side first.

Even now, he felt the Malkavian woman sit between them.

Sutton didn’t ever figure a  _ woman _ would come between them. LaCroix didn’t have a romantic or sexual bone in his body. He didn’t care a mote for vessels or ghouls, having no type other than his Ventrue particulars. Sutton had never seen him display affection for another. Which only made this all the more disturbing. He took her counsel, accepted her at his side, listened to her as he never listened to another. As he refused to listen to Sutton.

Sutton glanced out the window and caught sight of downtown Santa Monica. He slunk lower in his seat. The Sheriff wasn’t taking them back to the tower. When he parked in front of Asylum, Sutton wished he had never gotten out of bed.

Ever a dutiful friend and subject, he followed his prince to the nightclub. And, though it was difficult for Sutton, he kept his mouth shut. His opinions, never wanted, were now antagonistic. 

Darsh Amble, a tall and handsome Indian man with a fox-like smile, ruled elysium like his personal circus. In everywhere but the den of the Voerman sisters. In the seventies, one of his grandchilder sired a mistake, who started the Six Coyotes gang. The rebellion over Westside lasted longer than it had any right to. Even though Voerman had put them down, tension still lingered. Childer, no matter how unruly, were pride. Sutton figured there was more to it than that, but he had yet to wrestle it out of Darsh yet. What he had learned endeared him to his clanmate.

Darsh’s first childe and mate, Sarita, greeted kindred at the door with a fond eye and smile. She blended in with Asylum’s culture of steel spikes and black leather, but Sutton prefered her in the turquoise sari she wore to the museum last week.

She bowed gracefully to the prince but LaCroix, preoccupied with his personal strife, paid the obeisance no mind and harried past. The rudeness made the Toreador bristle.

Sutton took Sarita’s hand in both of his, kissing the knuckles. Anarchs needed more wooing than LaCroix liked to think.

“Apologies, my lady,” he said. “His Highness has urgent business of the crown to attend to.”

“Apologies are unnecessary,” said Sarita with a glint in her eye. “A prince’s work is never done, I am sure. Do you seek Darsh?”

“I wish to pay the keeper my respects,” he said solemnly.

Sarita chuckled, but led Sutton through the bustling nightclub. The scent of willing kine was thick in the air, but the ear-splitting music ruined the effect. Upstairs belonged to the Voermans, as the rest of club was given to elysium. A shrill cackle drew Sutton’s ear and eye. On the balcony above, Therese Voerman drank bloody cordial out of champagne flutes with a pair of Strauss’s apprentices and other faces Sutton didn’t know. And LaCroix. LaCroix tended to vanish at elysium into backrooms, stewing his own juices and growing only more pickled and sour. He didn’t smile, but he appeared to be engaged in lively conversation.

The Voerman sisters shared a laugh, shrill and piercing and cold as ice. Therese gave it again. She leaned over, too close, to whisper something in LaCroix’s ear. He smiled faintly and turned in the closeness.

Sutton did not realise he had stopped to watch until Sarita lay a hand on him. He shook his head. “Apologies, ma’am.”

She chuckled again but continued to pull him through the club.

“I am sure you find it all dreadfully amusing,” said Sutton, suddenly embarrassed at his own stodginess. “Camarilla courtesies and lack thereof.”

“We do,” she assured him. “But, here in Westside, we have long grown used to such organizations of power. Ladders, of course, are built to be climbed.”

Darsh suddenly exited the manager’s office into a bland and exposed hallway. He had not bothered to prepare for this elysium, at least so far as the costume went. The expensive Armani suit and gold wristwatch offered Therese Voerman a delicate snub.

He caught sight of Sutton and embraced him like a brother.

“Cousin,” he said energetically, “you simply must—”

“Keeper, if I could have a moment.” Sutton gestured to the office he had just exited, trusting his eyes to convey what could not be spoken outright.

Darsh lost his cheerful demeanor and a silent communication passed between him and Sarita. She returned to the dance floor.

Darsh had been sired into Anarch California only in the fifties, but Sutton never would have known it by the graceful bow. “I am ever at the service of my primogen,” he said sincerely.

“Aside from our shared clan, I believe we can and ought make mutual cause against an enemy of the crown,” said Sutton, choosing his words carefully.

Darsh evaluated him. “Whatever I could do to help, I shall.”

Sutton had learned enough about Darsh and his brood to know they would need only the slightest provocation to move against Voerman. Moving against the seneschal, though, would be something very different.

Darsh’s black eyes gleamed with unspoken thoughts. Sutton had never done well at this game. He was not made for courtly politics and intrigues. It was why he had never settled in any one city, unwilling to risk his unlife on power sport. This was more than sport, though. More than power. It was the city. It was the Prince LaCroix. It was Sebastian.

“The seneschal is a woman with many duties,” said Sutton delicately. “It would be in the best intentions of the realm if she did not have to waste her nights making appearances at elysium. The pressure weighs on her delicate psyche — I am sure you understand the clan’s weaknesses and the soft minds of women.”

Darsh smiled. “Of course, sir. Whatever I can do to best assist the prince and his… close consorts in these tremulous nights.”

“I am sure you spotted the new citizens of Westside,” he added.

“Warlocks?” He smirked. “Anarchs have long held curiosity about the clan.”

Sutton glanced to the door and pulled Darsh closer, as though those extra inches made any difference. “Consider your curiosity ill placed and best satisfied elsewhere.”

“With all due respect, Master Primogen, I will consider Regent Strauss and his clanmates by their merits and the judgement of my prince.” Darsh’s smile lost what little warmth it had.

Sutton left swiftly, before he said something to curse what he and Darsh had already agreed upon. The very air in Asylum choked him and he abandoned elysium for the night altogether. The tower greeted him, imposing and impartial, and he wondered if he had done the right thing. The smallest distance between Voerman and LaCroix was worth it. Even if only elysium. Something to dodge her influence. Whatever lingering mortal joy LaCroix found with Voerman — if either were capable of such things — were not worth her presence. Magical power was not worth the warlocks, let alone selling the realm to such an elder. Had LaCroix always been this blind, or this arrogant?

Sutton secluded himself in his own poor thoughts. He poured a favourite melancholic vintage and watched the stars. So long as he left the powers of his blood alone, they calmed him.

Still, he could not help but watch the space where the Red Star watched him, invisible to common sight.

Perhaps an hour before dawn, a hand turned the door to his penthouse. His heart lightened at the hope that Sebastian had come home.

The door burst open with a crash. The Sheriff tumbled through. Had Sutton’s mind, too, been able to move with Celerity he would’ve pieced things together. Before he could even wonder at the sudden violence, the Sheriff had staked him. Sharp excruciating pain blossomed from the wound. The Beast screamed, harsh and shrill, but it died in Sutton’s silent throat.

Paralyzed, Sutton found himself picked up as a ragdoll and slung over a shoulder. Unable to breathe. Unable to blink. His eyes, half-lidded, fixed on the Sheriff’s back. Soon, they found an elevator and the trunk of a car. Doors slammed. An engine growled to life. Tires slipped across the slick road.

Darsh. He could not have been such a damned fool. All those nights spent building rapport, thrown aside. Impossible. Perhaps he knew simply which way the wind blew, which coattails to hold onto. Or maybe Voerman knew things she had no right knowing. Or she sought to rid herself of an enemy, as far as influence over the prince went.

Sutton, a common stodgy architect, had no idea. A thousand answers, as innumerable as the stars, and not a single truth among them. The only truth, he contemplated as the car came to a standstill, was that he had done the right thing. He would not be being punished and treated with such indignity if his actions had been for not.

The Sheriff pulled him from the car, gently if without dignity. Sutton did not know where they were until he was dropped to the ground and the stake wrenched from his chest. The sudden relief was more painful than the staking. Sutton languished on his back, eyes shut tight. Every nerve screamed in agony.

“Marcus Sutton of Clan of the Rose, Toreador Primogen of Los Angeles, you are brought before this tribunal to answer for your cimes,” said Voerman.

Tribunal. Sutton rolled to his knees. This was not a tribunal. LaCroix did not even have a full court. And, yet, he looked up at what he did have. They stood in an abandoned warehouse LaCroix had purchased for nefarious tasks. Darsh Amble. The reclusive Alastair Grout. Strauss lingered like a red shadow, several steps behind Voerman. 

A keeper. A seneschal. A sheriff. Two primogen.

And a prince.

What a paltry, sad affair.

Sutton scoffed desperately as he saw LaCroix. His face gave nothing away. Blank and bored and disinterested.

“What am I accused of, exactly?” asked Sutton. Splinters rawed his throat.

“Conspiracy to murder the seneschal,” said Voerman.

Sutton scoured his memory, but couldn’t think of what he had said to Darsh earlier that night. Nothing. Nothing about murder. Could it be? Did the Ambles make peace with the Voermans for the sake of their own power?

Sutton couldn’t take his eyes off LaCroix. He struggled to his feet. “We don’t need a… a  _ tribunal _ for this,” he insisted. “We can settle this, private. You and me.”

“It is only right that this go through the proper channels,” said LaCroix in a hard voice.

Sutton shook his head dimly. Proper channels. That would only end with the Sheriff’s hands wrapped around his throat, his head ripped off. Or dawn. The slow leaden tiredness crawled through his veins. Dawn was not far off.

And there was a stake.

“He came to me, earlier tonight,” said Darsh. His voice was tight, frightened, but sure. “He wanted me to help him lure the seneschal to an exclusive elysium, to help frame her death as by the Anarchs of the Angels Wasteland.”

“Liar! I said nothing of the sort,” said Sutton desperately. “Not to anyone. I’m not a cold-blooded killer. While I am not overly fond of the Madame Seneschal, as you know, Your Highness, I don’t have that in me. Not conspiracy and, surely,  _ not _ murder. I—” He took a half step towards LaCroix, but the Sheriff behind him dropped a hand on his shoulder. The weight drove Sutton back to his knees.

“We cannot have suspicions or mistrust within the court,” Lacroix pronounced. “We must be united within, so as to guard Westside and Los Angeles from undue influence by the Sabbat and other enemies of the Camarilla. Our only true allies are among us. To that end, I have asked Regent Strauss for assistance in this matter.”

LaCroix didn’t believe those words. He couldn’t. He trusted none, especially not those closest to him.

Strauss stepped forward and produced a tiny vial from a pocket. It contained blood, but the colour glowed like rubies. “This is a formula my clan calls Ishtar’s Touch. One sip forces any to tell the truth when asked.”

LaCroix gestured to Sutton. “Do you submit to Ishtar’s Touch?”

LaCroix still believed in him. It was in the solemn look he gave him. The earnest hope. He wanted to go through the proper channels only to dispel any thought of betrayal, in hopes of laying the issues between Sutton and Voerman to rest.

“Absolutely,” Sutton swore.

Strauss clutched Sutton by the jaw with fingers of steel and poured a measured dose into his mouth. Sutton swallowed, displaying the empty mouth as proof.

Then, he felt it.

A whisper deep in his mind.

An urging in the back of his soul.

Sutton snapped his jaw shut until his teeth ached. No. No. No, he would  _ not  _ say that. 

Content, Strauss stepped backwards. “Master Sutton, what was the conversation tonight you shared with the Keeper of Elysium, Darsh Amble?”

Sutton’s mouth opened and words spilled out.

“I urged him to assist me in assassinating the Madame Seneschal, Therese Voerman, and Prince LaCroix—” Sutton fell to all fours, desperate to draw new breath, to rip the organ from his mouth. He gasped and continued, “—by using his station to lure them to a dangerous location in Beverly Hills and contacting the Anarch gang known as the Oranges.”

At once, his tongue sealed itself to the roof of his mouth.

The commandment had finished. That feeling. It was not unfamiliar to Sutton in any way at all. He gave Strauss a look of searing hatred. It was Dominate. He had never known Tremere had potions of the Discipline.

LaCroix would know. This was not him. LaCroix was a master of Dominate. He would know the signs, the minute ticks, the ceaseless waterfall of uncharacteristic damnation.

“Well. That seems to be it, then,” said Voerman.

Sutton couldn’t bare to look past Strauss. He did, regardless. The pain in LaCroix’s eyes ached in Sutton’s heart. No. He couldn’t be so much of a fool. To trust Voerman, to trust Strauss, to believe the Tremere over Sutton himself. Not after a century.

Sutton wrenched at his tongue. It was right there. The words lingered at the tip, but they couldn’t come out. Nothing about the potion, about Dominate, about Strauss. It died on his lips. 

The pain left LaCroix, replaced by a resolute anger that was hard and cold as steel. “That does appear to settle it, then. As Prince of Los Angeles, I sentence you to Final Death for treason to the crown and Camarilla. Have you any last words?”

The look he gave him was that of a stranger. Harsh and unfamiliar. Even if Sutton could have found his voice or the Dominate command released him, he doubted he could find Sebastian in the face of that prince. Not anymore.

“Perhaps since Strauss has routed out this traitor, he should have the honour,” suggested Voerman slyly.

LaCroix gave a jerk of his head as consent. Strauss stepped forward. He raised his hand and began to draw. Occult symbols shimmered in the air as disturbance. Strauss murmured moments more before pricking his thumb on a fang and pressing the dot of blood to Sutton’s forehead.

The staking was nothing compared to the pain of the curse.

It withered, screaming through his veins. They turned to rivers of fire, of sunlight, of red. Thrown forward to all fours again, Sutton barely recognised his hands. Liver spots grew along molted wrinkled flesh. The familiar crawl of dark brown hair had turned white. 

The years continued to claim him.

Sutton raised his head and found LaCroix’s eyes. Anger had faded. What replaced it, Sutton couldn’t say. He couldn’t even say if LaCroix himself knew.

“Caine help you, Sebastian,” said Sutton in a thin rasp. “Now. Now, you are truly lost.”

Moments later, the Final Death concluded and Sutton felt his limbs thin and rot away, into skeletal bones, and then only into dust. His vision faded, to black, then to red. Red. Red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really sincerely want to thank ASpotofBother for reading through the first installment and commenting on (I think?) every single chapter. Your kind words of support and compliments are so fucking appreciated.
> 
> V5 brought a lot of questionable metalore up to date, including a hideous throwaway line about Jeanette pegging LaCroix. And then I started to think. LaCroix/Therese is much more acceptable. I'm low-key working on Jeanette/LaCroix/Therese piece, but idk when that'll be done.


	2. Would-be Prince and Purple Magic

The sun fell over the horizon with a brilliant pink and yellow before fading to a cloak of dusk and, across the City of Angels, the vampires awoke. Monroe opened his eyes and, before he stood, reached for his phone. It gave him no cause to worry — tonight, at least. Of late, he had his head of security report nightly to him. Perhaps he had begun to mistrust in his age. Monroe felt his years more keenly than ever. No longer did he wake at dusk with a sudden awareness. It took him longer than he wanted to shower and dress.

His left shoulder ached with a stiff pain. The only remnant of the wound that had killed him a hundred and fifty years ago. Monroe directed his unmoving undead blood to heal it. Most nights, he wouldn’t bother. Tonight, he could not be vulnerable.

The house felt too large and too quiet by far. It had never been noisy, but Monroe still missed the atmosphere of her presence. Nothing replaced the smell of brewing coffee, the clinking of a human in a kitchen, a hummed tune. Instead, a gaping hole echoed, pierced by a small voice.

“Please,  _ please _ .”

Monroe didn’t glance down. The human handcuffed to the railing didn’t even twist at the restraints. 

“I won’t kill you,” he promised absently.

This didn’t reassure her any. She was the peak of vessels: young, attractive, physically fit. He put a strong hand on the woman’s chin and appraised her. Her heartbeat thumped hot blood just under his grip. Last night, he had seduced her from his music venue, Blue Moon. She was of that alternative culture but beautiful in it. Large soft black eyes, sleek dark hair, waifish. Orphan, as well, the only demographic Monroe could feed from.

“I hope she doesn’t kill you,” he said.

This reassured her even less. She struggled against the touch, handcuffs rattling the railing. He ran an errant hand through her hair and debated hunting again. Tara didn’t deserve this.

Monroe had been under the impression that age would make him  _ less _ sentimental.

He knelt and let the Presence flow out of him. The supernatural calm and allure drew the human’s eye. Penny, he remembered suddenly.

“Penelope,” he said. He kept his voice low, even, and steady, as though he spoke to a frightened animal — in truth, he did. As the swell of Dominate entered his voice, her face slackened. “My dear, I know you’re confused and frightened, but let me remind you. Last night, you went out with your friends to listen to music. You met the owner of Blue Moon. You drank with him, flirted with him, and he took you home. You had a sexual encounter.” He took a key from his pocket and removed the handcuffs. Penelope slipped against the railing. He supported her. “You stayed all day, enjoying yourself. It was a game. Perhaps sexually unorthodox among humans, but not sinister in nature.”

She smiled banally.

He brought the nearly limp body close. The smell spoke to his Beast, human musk and orphan blood. He fed, not to sate his hunger, but for the sheer pleasure of taking it. The pleasure that subsumed every other mortal enjoyment, that became erotic heroin to kindred — and to mortals. Penelope moaned low in her throat. He had given her scattered mind enough puzzle pieces. Mortals remembered what they wanted. 

Before Penelope could truly stand, he gave her a handful of bills and called a taxi. It couldn’t come fast enough. Every minute alone with the girl made him feel worse. He dared not speak or even think her name, but it came regardless. Hawthorne. His once-ghoul, sired at the brink of certain death, had abandoned him for the insult of her Embrace. Penelope’s resemblance was passing, at best, but the thought of watching Tara tear her apart had brought Monroe up short.

Once Penelope left — with a very unwilling kiss on Monroe’s part — Monroe pulled a nondescript jacket over a t-shirt and jeans. Without a suit or his hair combed, he knew he was scarcely recognisable as himself. 

Kindred preferred cities on the verge of ruin, with enough stolen wealth to live comfortably and a vast impoverished population. Homeless disappeared frequently in Los Angeles. No one cared. Kindred didn’t even need influence in the police for that. He wondered if this is what humans felt when they went to market, the variety of meaningless choice. Monroe felt no more moral concern choosing a vessel than he did choosing shampoo. He did try to choose one that was older, alone, and wouldn’t be missed by his own people. 

Perhaps Tara would take the less-ideal vessel as an insult. Part of Monroe hoped she did.

Unwilling to spend more blood on Disciplines, Monroe settled for threats to maneuver the vessel back into the house. With a gun, it wasn’t hard.

“What do you want, man?” he asked desperately. “I ain’t got anything to give.”

Silver Lake — a grim working class neighbourhood of expats and students to the southwest and new families by the reservoir — was not accustomed to gunshots. Monroe had taken to silencing his weapons, at least at home. He debated shooting the man for a minute. But, the screams.

Monroe so disliked screaming.

He settled for Dominate.

“ _ Don’t say another word _ .”

And it was so.

The man’s will quivered in his mental grasp. The Beast, even recently sated, languished in the naked power. Another voice of the Beast degraded him. Fowler, his sire dead sixty years, still lived in the vampiric animus at the back of his head.

_ What power is there over pitiful kine? You should be ashamed. There is no honour in commanding lesser beings. Then again, perhaps he is your superior being. Congratulations.  _

Monroe was tempted to put the gun to his own head, if only to shut Fowler up for a few more minutes.

Eventually, the man entered the house. It was large, but still veered to the side of family home than mansion. At the moment, it was a mess, the lived-in nature of roommates preserved though he now lived alone.

Monroe waved the gun at him. “Downstairs.”

Unable to speak, too terrified to escape, the man did as he was bade.

No one had a basement in California. The man must’ve known his death was imminent.

“I hope she doesn’t kill you,” said Monroe. He meant it, for what little it was worth.

With some more prodding, the man opened the door and stepped in. The walls had been knocked free, so the basement was one large windowless cement cube. A drain sat in the middle, a dusty bare lightbulb directly above.

A woman huddled in the corner. Once, her clothes might’ve been nice, but they had been tattered and ruined by her months in captivity by Garcia.

He flicked on the light. “Good evening, Tara,” he said genially. “I’ve brought you dinner.”

He hadn’t spoken so many words to her in the last week.

She raised her head, a ragged mess of auburn hair, grey-white skin. And fangs. The rabid look in her eye was manufactured. Animal blood sustained and satisfied and, of that, Monroe provided ample. She was not starving.

Her eyes greedily drank his form. He had kept his distance, hidden in darkness and quick movements. This was the first she had seen him, but he could tell she didn’t recognise him. How could she?

Monroe shoved the man down the wooden stairs in the basement. At the bottom, invisible to naked eye, glowed a magical glyph in the aether. The ward prevented any kindred but Monroe from crossing it. As evident from the talon scratches in the cement, Tara had done her best to find another exit.

As soon as the man crossed the ward, Tara fell upon him like a wild animal. Monroe sat on the stairs and watched carefully. Would she kill? She was hungry, surely, but how cavalier was she with kine? Monroe always thought a good measure of a kindred’s integrity to be wrapped up with how they treated their vessels.

Tara drank long and deep, shredding the man’s neck, before discarding him. The body hurled through the air, landing on the drain with a metallic clang.

Good to know where they stood.

Tara wiped her mouth with a filthy hand. “How much longer—”

“How about introductions?” he asked cordially, as though they were at a kaffee klutch and not a holding cell. “You first.”

“Tara,” she gave reluctantly. Monroe held her unblinking stare until she flinched. “Tara Keanry. Brujah.”

She spoke truth, at least. She didn’t even introduce herself as the master of San Diego — baron or prince.

“My name’s Monroe, of Clan Ventrue. It’s a pleasure.”

Tara smiled. Gore and blood clung to her teeth. “That’s a treat, isn’t it? LA’s second Ventrue. The fuck are you keeping me here for, then?”

“I may not be Louis Fortier,” he admitted, “but there are those who call me baron here.”

Eager for news, Tara slipped off her haunches and sat. “Here is where?”

“Silver Lake. Los Feliz. Hollywood, as well.”

She smirked. “Abrams loved that, I’m sure. You know, Hollywood was his old turf before he decided to follow the movie industry to Burbank and Glendale. Toreadors.” She sniffed in derision at the clan of fairweather artists.

“You and Abrams were friends, once.”

“You want history?” Tara’s voice was a gunshot.

“I’m not your enemy,” he promised. “I’m your only chance of getting out of LA alive. What do you think the rest of the city would’ve done when they realised who Garcia had in his wine cellar?”

Tara licked the blood from her teeth, but couldn’t stop her lip from curling. Cleverness shone in her eyes. She would put it together. A week Monroe had imprisoned her. Why? Why, if he would just let her walk?

He had been waiting for something. Orders. And orders had come.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want your story,” he said. “I know some of it. You were one of the original Anarchs in California, part of the force that overturned the Camarilla princes in the nineteen-forties. The Revolutionary Council divvied up LA, San Francisco, and San Diego into petty kingdoms and baronies. Over the last six decades, you have solidified and consolidated your power. Baron of San Diego. Then, like Barty Vaughn, the Baron of the San Francisco Peninsula, you sought to turn your city over to the Camarilla. Why?”

“Why do you care?” she demanded. “The Tower left me hanging. Garcia and the other LA barons came in with a war party, like they were screaming Sabbat. That was May.”

“It’s December.”

“Fucking hell.” Tara’s guarded scorn fell to reveal her fear. Seven months and the Tower hadn’t come for her.

“Why did they imprison you when they could’ve killed you?”

“Why did  _ you _ ? Don’t have the fangs to kill me?”

Tara tried to goad him to crossing the ward that protected him. She was of Clan Brujah: strong, fast, with the same manipulation of emotions he had, not to mention what other Disciplines she might’ve picked up from her people. Clan Ventrue were not made for one-on-one fights like that. She would win. Monroe had only won his conflict with Garica by guile. 

Monroe did not need to close the distance. He regretted letting Penelope go as his fangs ached.

“ _ Bash your head against the ground _ ,” he said irreverently.

Tara’s will was beautifully strong. Old, perhaps as old as him. One and a half, two centuries. In the Anarch Free States, that was basically elder tier. Even so, it meant little against him.

She did as she was told. With her strength, the concrete cracked with hairlines. The sickening wet crack echoed but she made not a sound.

“ _ Again _ .”

This time, face on. Her nose broke bloodlessly. Kindred didn’t bleed.

Tara began to laugh, but it gurgled with an off-sound. She healed it as she sat back. The cackles continued and she shook her head.

“LA’s last prince did that, you know,” she said with ironic glee. “MacNeil always said that Don Sebastian beat him, but Don had him beat himself. God, Dominate.” She shook her head, understanding. “And you’re just as much a Tower cape as he was.”

“No,” said Monroe calmly. “I’m autuarkis. Independent, self-sufficient. Neither me nor my domain take part in any of the sects.”

Tara drank that down. Autarkis were beyond rare. Reckless, normally powerful enough to resist restraining at the hands of either the Camarilla, Anarchs, or Sabbat. Perhaps she believed the power, but Monroe did not think she was quite that stupid. It was rather he was irreverent. 

“What’s your interest in me?” she asked.

“I’m doing someone a favour. Someone you’ll like.”

“The Tower came back for me,” she whispered.

Hope, the most self-damning of all emotions. It meant nothing and everything.

“Yes,” he assured her. “In a manner of speaking, but I can’t let you out without answers. Tell me why Garcia imprisoned you.”

“Is Garcia dead? If you’re claiming his domain…” She sucked at her lips. “Goddamn. What happened to the rest of it? MacNeil’s Barony of Angels? Didn’t it have most of Central LA?”

“Most. From Inglewood to the hills. Route 405 to 110. Nines still holds Downtown. It’s a warzone.”

The old barony lines meant little anymore. Nines had shored his own up, but only against the mess that the shining Barony of Angels had become. Anarchs called such lands without a baron to unite the raiding coteries a wasteland, domain where the fighting was so thick and ferocious that peace would never come. Anarchs thought it a good thing, that the strongest would rise above, regardless how many strong or weak or innocent died in the struggle.

“How’s San Diego?” she asked.

Not hope now. Fear. Her expression remained guarded, but her voice less so.

“Why did Garcia imprison you, rather than kill you?” asked Monroe again, with less patience. “Don’t force me to ask you a third time.”

“San Diego is  _ mine _ ,” she said. Her words bit with vengeance. “The people in there —  _ mine _ . My gang, my childer, my friends. Sure, I had my detractors, but everyone was on board. We came to the conclusion together. I might have turned my back on the Movement, but I never would have on my people.”

“You still have influence there,” he said. She was a valuable piece. If her people did love her, she could be ransomed. She also was the embodiment of San Diego, if she were to be believed.

She nodded. “Did Garcia  _ purge _ it?”

Purge. Another old Camarilla word. To burn out utterly, take no prisoners, and salt the earth. She used it with equal measures irony and fear. Fear that Garcia’s downward spiral had involved too many Camarilla customs. 

Monroe gifted her with truth. “No.”

Given the answer she had been hoping for, Tara stood uneasily and paced back and forth like a caged animal. Her face continued to heal, slowly, as she burned through the blood she had just devoured.

“San Diego,” she said again. “How’s my city?”

“Same,” said Monroe. “You can coordinate the retaking when you leave. Not with me.”

“Of course,” she said with another fox-like smirk. “You aren’t Tower.”

“Why are you? Why did you go back?”

Tara stretched, as though her muscles ached and creaked. Kindreds had no need for such motions. She stalled for moments more. “You don’t care why I left,” she said. “You want to know how to make  _ other _ Anarchs leave. You’re a rat.”

Monroe couldn’t honestly deny it. It didn’t make the accusation sting any less. 

“But, because I wish you luck in that, I’ll tell you. I’ll be the first to say it: we were wrong.” She nodded and her pale eyes became far older, sadder. “I’m sure I know what people are saying about me. That I betrayed the Movement for power, for riches, for a shiny neo-gothic cape. I didn’t. We left the Tower ages ago to make better lives for ourselves, to rule communally, to establish equality between the clans, and Generations, and races. What’ve we done with it? Half of our lands are wastelands. The barons, in many cases, are no better than princes.  _ All  _ MacNeil had to do when they killed Don Sebastian was to take his place. That’s it. A reformed Camarilla prince would’ve almost destroyed the Movement, but it would’ve done so much good for the people they claimed to fight for. They settled for satisfying their egos over their people.”

She became desperate, as though to convince Monroe of something he had realised decades ago.

“Change needs to come from within,” he summarized.

Tara relaxed marginally. “Exactly. Against the Camarilla, the Sabbat, the Ashirra, the Movement won’t last. If we want to change it, we can’t  _ leave _ it.”

“The Camarilla and the Ashirra are making an alliance,” said Monroe. Tara would find out soon enough. “Two greatest sects in the world. They’re joining, supposedly, to hold strong against the Sabbat.”

Tara didn’t speculate. Not with him, but he could see it. She understood. The Sabbat, while global, weren’t strong enough to demand the ancient rivals making peace. Some millenia ago, the clans had split. While some went to Europe, others folded among the Islamic nations in the Middle East. Where the Camarilla claimed Rome, the Ashirra claimed Cairo. The Camarilla went to the New World, the Ashirra went East. At most, the two sects maintained an unspoken truce of distance. 

“It’s being sealed with Victoria Ash’s marriage to Tegyrius, an Assamite elder.”

Tara laughed. The cruel sound echoed off the concrete. “ _ Marriage _ ? What do the Camarilla think this is, the Middle Ages?”

“That’s exactly what the Camarilla thinks this is,” he said dryly.

Monroe’s pager buzzed. It was time.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Prince Tara,” he said. “You’ve been most obliging and I apologize for your accommodations.”

She smirked at his change in tone. “Once a Ventrue, always a Ventrue.”

“I have a debt to pay,” he said simply. “I will pay it. For now, you will  _ forget _ .”

Unprepared, Tara had a moment to show her rage at the violation. Monroe still had a grip on her will, however, and he pulled harder than was necessary. The conversation left her memory, replaced by a grey fog, and she stood, mute and still. In the moment, he crossed the glyph and stabbed a wooden stake through her heart. Instantly, Tara froze and collapsed like a corpse. 

Monroe closed her staring eyes. He was only useful to Pieterzoon if no one knew he served the Tower, however unwillingly. If any found out, Monroe would find himself face the same fate he himself delivered Garcia to: butchery at the hands of his own kindred.

Monroe carried Tara outside. A sleek black town car waited. A ghoul stepped out. He appeared like a young man with shiny dark hair and a dark suit, perhaps heir to some fortune of questionable legality. He clicked his heels and opened the trunk.

“Good evening, sir,” said the ghoul, tones clipped and proper. A strong Dutch accent clung to the words. Monroe had learned to trust the accent as marking any of Pieterzoon’s men. This one he knew as Pieterzoon’s head of household.

“Evening, Anton,” he said wearily, depositing Tara in the trunk. “How are you tonight?”

But Ritter had knelt. It was a specific position, one that Clan Ventrue had refined last during medieval times, and one that Monroe had done enough to know perfectly but none executed it with such grace as a winter ghoul. Left knee up, right knee down, left arm across, right arm in offer, head bowed, lips silent. Monroe couldn’t decide if he adored or loathed it. His Beast recognised it.

After a moment of enjoying the submission, Monroe let Ritter kiss the place where his signet ring should’ve been, and then the juncture of veins at his inner wrist. His lack of ring would be noted. Maybe not by Pieterzoon, though. He didn’t take that much stock in old customs.

Ritter stood, relieved at having paid obeisance. 

“How are you tonight, Anton?” asked Monroe again, eager to do anything to dispel the formality.

The ghoul started at the direct and familiar address. “I am well, sir.”

“Have you managed to find time to check out the Autry National Center yet?”

He often wondered how Anton Ritter relayed these conversations to his master. Monroe meant nothing by them. He simply knew the fascination immortals had with history, as it passed them by.

Ritter smiled. The stiff unnatural expression made Monroe’s mind stop short as he remembered another old ghoul. “I have, sir, thank you. It was a wonderful experience, sir. I was first blooded in the era of your American cowboys, though I knew little in life.”

“I as well. May I suggest, for your next day off, LACMA? It’s an art museum, with an impressive timespan.”

“I don’t get that many days off, sir.” A shot of fear entered Ritter’s eyes as he realised what he had said.

Monroe brushed the words aside. Among Ventrue, even their ghouls, the merest insult was a dear sin. To Monroe, Anton Ritter was supposed to represent Jan Pieterzoon, a monumental task to anyone.

“As ever, you are welcome in my domain or at my side,” said Monroe. His words were equally for Ritter and Pieterzoon.

Ritter inclined his head. “Thank you, sir. I will keep that in mind.”

Monroe shut the trunk. “Tell our friend that she was cooperative,” he said, “but that she killed the vessel I offered.”

He knew Pieterzoon would take it as the same indication of character that he did.

“He extends his condolences,” said Ritter. It was his favourite phrase. He inclined in a short bow. “I may take the corpse, sir, if you wish.”

“I have it under control,” he said. Orsay was always in search of new bodies. While he knew she used the bones in macabre art, he didn’t want to think of what she did with the flesh. “Take her to him. I’ll provide you a report, should he require my witness to her answers. Give my well wishes to your master.”

Dismissed, Ritter did as he was told. He clicked his heels once more, slipped behind the wheel, and returned Tara and himself to Pieterzoon’s temporary base in Beverly Glen.

Tara would have an unpleasant ride, but she would be delivered to the house of a visiting archon — an agent of the Camarilla’s Inner Circle, the same agent Monroe himself owed a life boon to. In time, Tara would reclaim her city, rule as a prince, and make her changes, until the Camarilla decided they could no longer tolerate a traitor prince. Without warning, she would be deposed of and replaced by one whose loyalty more sure than her own.

Monroe almost felt bad for her.

Most of his pity was spared for himself, however. Every step he took towards paying off his unpayable debt was a step away from his own kindred. Anarch-sired neonates made up his coterie and domain. People who, while they liked him now, would have few reservations of serving him what they had all served Salvador Garcia. The betrayal he enacted every time he answered his phone dug into him like a knife.

But, he was honourbound to pay off the debt, and so he would. As always, his own desires lay at the very bottom of his list of priorities.

He returned to the empty and quiet house, at a loss. Without another’s desires to guide him, he didn’t know what to do with himself. Hawthorne’s passion for music had driven him to create a record label and become controlling partner in a music venue. Together, they had produced artists and found new talent in the music venue. Her attendance at local universities always brought him modern skills and pieces of history that, despite his age, he didn’t know.

Monroe sat on the couch. The silence hung in the air like a storm. It taunted him with half-finished chess games, music memorabilia from the last eight decades, and the photo album he hadn’t dared pick up. He knew what he would find within. Him and Hawthorne, photos taken at hundreds of concerts, many with famous musicians, in all manner of human fashions.

He pushed aside the unfamiliar feeling and forced himself to stand. He still had responsibilities. He still had duties. Once, he thought the acquisition and independence of Silver Lake would have satisfied him. He was wrong. Yet, he had taken on the kindred of his domain. He was responsible for them, as Tara had been responsible for San Diego’s. Their protection and prosperity was paramount. 

  
  


Charlie had never seen Blue Moon’s basement so packed. Most of the time, it felt like a private clubhouse. Just the gang. Hanging out. Watching movies, MTV, kicking back with a snake beer. Now, she could barely see the scuffed floorboards.  _ Dozens _ of vampires pregamed for the upstairs event, blaring rock music until it whined with interference. Not only Silver Lake’s either. She spotted Damsel’s cherry red hair. At least some from the Downtown Barony, probably from other baronies, too. The wall of sound and press of undead bodies almost knocked her flat.

Charlie lived on the second floor of Blue Moon, at least for now. Monroe kept a half dozen sparse hotel room-looking things for guests. Since her death, she had nowhere else to go. More than once he offered to buy her a condo — house — apartment. Whatever she wanted. Charlie wanted to never forget what she was again.

That many vampires filled her with dread. Already, she had learned to be wary of them. Murderous, thieving criminals, even the best of them. Even her. Most of her just wanted to hide out upstairs, but, so long as she was part of Monroe’s crew, she felt she needed to make an appearance.

Behind the bar, Alice Zhao and another familiar face hurried to keep up with the demand. Here, there was no tab.

Manuel Rubio gave a rattlesnake-like hiss that shrilled at a different frequency than normal sound. Even so, it found Charlie. His grin felt more natural than any other. Grudgingly, she stepped up to the bar and accepted a pint glass, full of a red-tinged beer topped with rose gold foam.

“Better catch up, cousin,” he said enthusiastically. “Come on. Come on.”

She took a sip but that wasn’t enough, not by far. Emboldened by the wild atmosphere, she drank it all down. Her stomach churned as it realised the drink wasn’t blood. The haze went straight to her head, snake beer’s usual golden glow becoming an assault of Northern Lights.

“Alright, alright,” said Rubio with a chuckle. Charlie slid her glass back and he filled it up. “We don’t want any blood gods blacking out. Pace yourself.”

Blood gods. The quaint term Setites used to refer to vampires. As if they were all the blood of ancient gods, descendents of Set, Loki, and Typhon. Outlander gods of mischief and chaos.

“Did you see Zari or Jack?” Charlie asked over the music.

Rubio pointed, already turning to address another customer.

Charlie pushed her way through the crowd to their typical corner. Blue Moon’s basement looked much like its main floor, bare grey brick and deep night-sky blue, Xeroxed posters plastered over every inch, purposefully mismatched furniture and tables. Black-leaf plants poured from hanging baskets; Zari’s work, ghouled plants that reached with razor sharp thorns for hot blood. This close to Christmas, strings of lights hung around the ceiling, and a real pine tree glowed in the corner.

Tonight, the tables had been cleared. A pair of couches L’d the corner around a rugged coffee table and chairs dragged close. Jack straddled one of the chairs and it was his flippant, ironic voice that Charlie heard first. Of course, arguing with Zari, about something that didn’t matter. It was how the two of them communicated. A beautiful Black woman sat on one of the couches, sprawled against a silver man that sparked not a wholly-innocent anger in Charlie. 

Ashley saw her first, however.

“Look who’s finally awake,” he drawled with a fanged smile that didn’t touch his eyes. The Presence almost bowled her over with artificial devotion, like a magnet, whispering to the static that never quieted in her mind. Every inch of him was beautiful in the most inhuman way. His porcelain skin glowed gently, his hair was molten silver, and he dressed like a coke dealer from the year 3000.

“Turn it off,” she insisted. “That Presence.”

He smiled at her and it only intensified. “I’m not doing a thing. I can understand. It’s hard to not feel like that around me. Come here, darling.”

Charlie grabbed a hold of his purple suit jacket. 

Zari sipped blood from a glass, only sitting up to get out of Charlie’s way. “Oh, no, please, stop,” she said unconvincingly.

Charlie yanked him to his feet. He wore nothing underneath and her knuckles brushed the skin, increasing the power to a startling degree. Adoration pulled at her heart, mingling with the Beast, overriding her own homosexuality with the violation.

_ Kiss him. Take him. Bite him. He tastes like starstuff, light in his veins and darkness in his eyes.  _

“Hands off the merchandise, love,” he said in a saccharine voice. “I know extended family is rough—”

“Extended family?” burst Charlie. 

The ridiculousness broke through Ashley’s vulgar Presence. She understood what he meant, but the idea of Ashley being any sort of family to her made her throw him to the ground in distaste.

While Garcia’s death had left a colossal power vacuum, Ashley and Monroe used it to consolidate their own power bases. Ashley took the hills — Beverly Glen, Bel Air, all those McMansions — and Monroe claimed independent domain over their Silver Lake and Los Feliz. Together, they held Hollywood, however uneasily. Monroe wanted the land to expand for his people. Ashley wanted to run drugs and party. Everyone won.

Except for Charlie, who had to deal with Ashley’s face at every turn. His childer were much like him, but younger and more bearable.

Charlie sat next to Zari and put her arm around the more slender girl. “How’s the party going? Am I late?” she asked.

Ashley stood in a flash and opened his mouth.

Zari raised a finger and eyebrow.

Ashley sat.

Beside Charlie. But he did sit.

He slipped his arm around them both. The fingers stroked the shoulder of her jean jacket, as though seeking for skin underneath.

“Good to see you’re adjusting,” said Ashley.

Charlie turned to look at him. It was a mistake. His five hundred dollar sunglasses rose to rest on his hair. His eyes were the same violent shade of purple as his jacket. She couldn’t look away from those eyes.

_ Purple isn’t real. It doesn’t exist. Not really. Not in nature. So rare. That shade humans made up with fancy light. Neon and highlighters. Colours lost in deep space galaxies. _

“You could do a little better, though, hmm? Little happier?” said Ashley, more softly.

Ashley’s hand rose from her shoulder, intending surely to brush away an errant curl.

With effort, Charlie wrenched herself backwards.

“If that hand touches me again, you will lose it,” she said.

Ashley kept his hand to himself, but not his Presence. It bled out of every pore. Best Charlie could do was ignore it.

And drink. Her shoulders crunched in defence against him.

Charlie made quick work of her second beer.

“How’s life — or unlife, whatever?” she asked Zari.

Zari, the most beautiful woman in every room she had ever been in, smiled. “Nothing’s new since last night,” she said pointedly. “Aside from  _ them  _ coming down from the hills.”

“Tell your sire to fuck off,” said Charlie as she felt Ashley open his mouth. “Do we have anything planned for Christmas? I know we’re undead demons or whatever, but, it’s Christmas.”

“ _ Foster _ sire,” said Zari reluctantly. “And, we can talk about that later. I’m sure Monroe will want to throw a party or something. Downtown has an annual drag race. Nines’ boys wait all year for it. Drag race and cops and robbers but with, you know.”

Real cops. Real guns.

Just like Greystone and Garcia’s uncontrollable vampires.

“I get the idea,” said Charlie dryly. “Never figured Monroe would really be the party type. I can’t imagine him trashed, you know?”

“I can,” said Ashley.

“Who asked you?” snapped Zari.

“Aren’t we all on the same team?” asked Jack tiredly. He didn’t get it.

“Ask Ashley, then,” said Zari. “Fucking worm he is.”

“High praise from a wilting rose.”

“Baby, I’m blooming here.”

“Why can’t we just all be civil?” asked Jack. He leaned his head on his hands. The chair seemed to barely constrain his towering form.

“He started it,” said Zari. 

“Yeah, and I doubt he turned on Presence just for me.”

“Oh, everything’s just for you, princess.”

“The bar for you is literally so low,” said Charlie, “and you, dumb fuck, brought a shovel.”

Without looking back into those purple eyes, Charlie shoved him off the couch. A hand wrapped around her neck before he hit the ground. Five fingers of stone, iron. Steel.

He forced her to look at him. Those cruel beautiful eyes and features that belonged on Greek statues. He wanted her submission, to agree to be toyed with.

Charlie refused. Neither blinked. Neither breathed.

She was vaguely aware of the blaring music, the jostle of bodies, of conversation. This wasn’t uncommon. Most in the room would love to see Ashley decked. Monroe’s goodwill and name on the building stopped anyone from doing it outright.

Still. Charlie was Monroe’s coterie. Blue Moon was hers as much as it was his. She had the right to throw him out. As much shit as he gave, she wasn’t helpless.

A ghost pressed at the fabric of the Cobweb, that Clan Malkavian curse that plagued her every waking moment. Charlie was no stranger to the hallucinations — tactile, auditory, visual — that came through. Sometimes they reflected other Malkavians’ minds, other times they seemed flashes of insight or the future or past, always too muddled to read like a crystal ball.

This ghost was not either. It was too persistent. Too purple.

It broke through the walls of her mind like tissue paper. And then, it was there. Ashley. His mind sat in her mind’s eye.

_ Listen to me, brat. _ The mental voice bore little resemblance to Ashley’s snide tones. It grew sharp and serious. Dangerous whispers on a plucked string.  _ You have survived the Angels Wasteland, so far, because Monroe protects you. Our kind finds power in the  _ perception _ of it. It is a lesson Monroe knows well. Learn it. Monroe needs me and I him. Push me around again and you allow others to lose their perception of my power. And I will respond, in a way you will not like. Alone, do what you want to me. I enjoy this game. _

The ghost withdrew but this was her mind. Charlie reached out and grabbed it back by its tail. She imagined a Casper-like silver and purple pustule. Surprised in her grip, it wriggled.

_ Listen to me, then.  _ She concentrated the thoughts until she felt the voice in her inner mind. A door once opened could be yelled through in either direction.  _ I do  _ not _ enjoy this game. Respect me. Call me by my name.  _ **_Do not touch me_ ** _. _

Ashley blinked and his hand jerked off her neck as though shocked. No time had passed at all. Jack stood beside Ashley, prepared to pull him off Charlie, but, as Ashley peacefully sat, Jack returned to his own chair, confused.

“You alright?” Jack asked her.

Charlie nodded. Nothing had changed. Not really. Nothing would change. She turned to Ashley and felt his Presence less like a spotlight and more like a floodlight. Eyes from others in the basement turned admiringly to him and it faded from her.

“That is quite something,” he said quietly as he appraised her in a way that made her skin crawl. “Wordless Dominate in telepathy. My oh my, Monroe has been busy with you.”

The praise felt like a threat. 

Monroe hadn’t taught her a damn thing. She rarely saw him, in fact. Dominate was as native to Malkavian blood as Ventrue. It had responded to her anger. Still, Charlie remembered Monroe’s hesitation in the alliance with Ashley. It was best for Ashley’s knowledge of their abilities to be as inaccurate as possible, should things sour. There was no justice, no safety, no law and order but what they made for themselves. Chaos was the likely result.

Let him think her a master of Dominate. Good.

A ripple wove through the vampires. Someone had come. The name came slowly. Monroe had arrived, on time and not a minute early. Had anyone stopped him, no one would think he owned a hot music club. He dressed more like a wealthy office manager: dark jeans, brown blazer, waist coat. A watch could be set by his hair and tell better time.

Even so, the Anarch vampires of his domain flocked to him, drunk and excited. There was no stage, so Monroe hopped up onto the bar. A few whoops followed him.

“Everyone see me? Everyone hear me?” he asked crisply. He wore a smile that Charlie had never seen outside of public appearances. “No one, except me, wants me to make a speech. But this is my club and I locked the elevator so, you’re stuck here.” The vampires booed. He clapped once. “This is how tonight is going to go: we’re going to listen to a lot of music from the Deathsingers and get very drunk. End speech.”

The cacophony became deafening. The vampire band called the Deathsingers got raised on shoulders and a rallying call of the band name started. Charlie anticipated a lot of blacked out blood gods tonight.

Monroe laughed — actually  _ laughed _ — as attention came back to him. “Got a few rules first,” he said. He waved the boos away. “Yeah, yeah, shut up. Common sense. If you want to feed from the humans upstairs, do it here, do it discreetly. Don’t kill. You can bring blood and snake beer upstairs. Just don’t let humans drink it. Last rule, have a great time.”

They needed no further encouragement than that. A flood of vampires squeezed into the elevator like undead sardines, releasing them to the music pit above.

Monroe stepped down from the bar and greeted Rubio with a hug. Charlie liked this Monroe. She wished he were around more often. 

Charlie scanned the last of the crowd as they funneled into the second elevator. “Where’s Jesse?” she asked.

Jesse Harper, once known as the Ace of Spades for the calling card she left on her victims, had unofficially joined the coterie a couple of weeks ago. Her identity as a vampire hunter kept secret, she had awkwardly hung around.

“Upstairs already,” said Jack. He stood, unfolding like a slinky. “Wanna head?”

Charlie gave Zari a questioning look, but she only waved her on. “I’m only here to make an appearance. I have things to do.” 

Things to do. Aisha, surely. Zari’s daughter had been nowhere to be seen either. During their fight with Salvador Garcia, he had Embraced the daughter Zari had left thirty years ago. Now of similar age, they looked more sisters than anything. Despite being turned less than three months ago, Charlie felt bad for the new fledgling.

Still. Charlie took Zari’s advice to heart. Look ahead. Never behind.

She took Jack’s lead. 

“Know what kinda music the Deathsingers make?” she asked.

“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

“It’s—” Monroe’s lips tightened as he realised Jack truly did not care. His eyes softened. “Have fun, you two.”

Charlie held the elevator and bowed deeply. “After you, Your Highness.”

“Careful with that now,” he said mildly, but he stepped in. “That’s the address of a Cam prince.”

“It was just a joke,” she muttered.

“We do need to talk later,” he said. He hit the button on the elevator and the door shut. “I’m sure Ashley knows, but it would be prudent for all to be aware.”

And there he was. The other Monroe. Stoic, formal, calculating, and ruthless. Charlie wished she could throw him back at the bar.

“What is it, captain?” asked Jack. The elevator stopped but Jack held the doors shut.

“Somehow, in ways that will haunt me I am sure, Barty Vaughn found my telephone number,” said Monroe. “He left me a message advertising his elysium. All are invited.” He turned to Charlie as he felt her sigh. “Elysium is an old Tower word, referring to a social salon where Disciplines are not allowed and safety is guaranteed coming, going, and during.”

“Maybe we should make Blue Moon elysium,” said Charlie irritably. “Stave off Ashley’s bullshit.”

“Careful,” said Monroe again gently, but the rebuke bit like he had slapped her. “This is Anarch territory. As much as I am independent and can recognise good ideas regardless their creator, if I am seen as a Camarilla supporter—”

“Yeah, yeah, guillotine, eat the rich.”

Nothing had changed after Garcia. They were still in terrible danger. Power was temporary. There was only so much to go around and everyone wanted it. It promised autonomy and free will, supposed hallmarks of the Anarch Free States but in short supply. Charlie had fast learned that despite the relatively small vampire population of three hundred, LA was a tangled mess of alliances for peace, power, and hoping everyone left them the fuck alone. Enter Ashley.

“What do you want us to do?” asked Jack. “Are you going?”

Monroe took a pocketwatch from his waistcoat. Charlie was almost sure the gold antique was genuine. “I need to,” he said shortly and that was the end of that. “You don’t and I won’t stop you, but it would not be wise.”

“I’ll make sure everyone stays,” he promised.

Monroe nodded and the smallest tenseness left his shoulders. “Thank you, Jack.”

They stepped out onto the main floor. If the assault of sound downstairs was a garden wall, this was the Great Wall of China. The colossal scent of humans — musk, perfume, cologne, beer, grease,  _ blood _ — threatened to sweep her away in a tidal wave. Presence shone across the crowd like invisible lasers, drawing her eyes to every Toreador or Brujah who turned it on.

Monroe transformed again into his public appearance face, as he sought a music reporter. Among the vampires, he was respected, even if he needed a few kegs of snake beer to get there, but among his humans in Blue Moon, he was a celebrity. His own Presence was more refined, tuned not to excitement and allure, but a calm glimmering confidence.

The Deathsingers hadn’t opened the stage yet, but their instruments and backdrop hung waiting. The humans weren’t nearly as drunk as the vampires, but were getting there fast. Jack threw himself at Ashley’s childer. They didn’t look quite as outlandish as he did, but they had the same unearthly cruel beauty. They jabbered on with some unfamiliar faces. More gangs passing by as they left the wasteland.

“Don’t head north,” one of them was saying. “Caine — or God — or Lilith, seriously, someone should start looking after us.”

“We lost two trying to get out out of Northridge in the Valley.  _ Two _ , in one night. Molotov cocktail and — boom, just like that.”

“Shit, man, you’re always welcome here,” said Blake, Ashley’s eldest. He was stupendously drunk and slung a clumsy arm around the gang leader. “Want anything, only ask, yo. We always here for you.”

Charlie passed them, straining her ears against the terrible racket. She had never been one for parties, really, and had died before she could legally drink. She doubted Jesse would be either. Maybe they could hang out downstairs. It’d be quieter, hopefully.

Charlie heard her before she saw her. Jesse was a greyscale image, stark white hair and skin, dark eyes and baggy clothes. Her distinct raspy voice carried far.

“I have to say New York’s the worst place for a lick,” she said airily. “So many hunters. Goddamn, it makes things easy — I mean, hard. What bout you? Where you coming from?”

“Same as you, girl. All over. New Orleans is rough. Seattle’s rougher. Fuck man, nowhere comes easy to us.”

Charlie blinked, as though she couldn’t believe what she saw. Jesse sat at a wide corner booth, with Copper and two of his coterie. Rosa was an exceptionally quiet girl, covered in a huge mustard overcoat, almost surely a Malkavian thinblood. The Cobweb felt like it knew her. The other, Julius, had a ghost of a moustache and spoke with a paralyzing stutter. They had a hard life coming down to Silver Lake.

Copper, a bulky kid with red-brown hair and a perpetually broken nose, knocked back the shot. Real liquor. Human drink. “The trick is knowing who  _ not _ to fuck with,” he said. He turned the glass upside down. “I stay outta people’s way. Monroe — that’s one to not fuck with. Ashley — goddamn. Garcia, Abrams, Fortier, Voerman, all those barons. Fuck them. So long as I’m left alone, I don’t give a damn.”

“Alone to do what?” asked Jesse innocently.

Fuck. Charlie tried to push her way through the crowd. Jesse was planning on hunting again. She was looking for new targets. Of course, why else would a famed vampire hunter hang around vampires? Charlie felt so stupid, to expose them all to this. 

“Alone to live?” suggested Rosa in a whisper.

“Alone to watch anime,” said Copper with a laugh.

“There’s a TV downstairs,” said Jesse. “You gotta see it. The quality, surround sound — money can’t buy. Well, I guess money  _ did _ buy it, but that’s not the point. We’ve been watching all sorts of stuff. Can’t get anyone to watch anime… with me…”

Jesse trailed off as Charlie stared at her. She had been asking an innocent question, making friends with the least vampiric vampires around. Thinbloods, who were barely stronger than ghouls.

Jesse fast averted her eyes, ashamed. She finished her beer and scratched through her choppy white hair. In the short sleeves, her large biceps flexed.

Charlie sat down heavily. At the stage, the lights went up and a whistling applause greeted the Deathsingers. The humans, unsure what was going on, followed the rabid vampires.

“Shit, the show’s starting,” said Copper. He clapped Jesse on the shoulder. “Girl, come on down. You, too.”

Jesse shook her head, suddenly awkward. “I’m alright here. Maybe later.”

Charlie waved them off.

“Suit yourself.”

Copper took Rosa and Julius down to the pit, shrugging, but already infected by the atmosphere.

“You alright?” asked Charlie.

Jesse sighed, then flinched. Charlie knew why. That sigh, that intake of breath to alleviate exasperation, did nothing. It filled lungs that didn’t take to the oxygen, then emptied. There was nothing to be done about undead emotions, other than bear them.

“No,” she said. “I mean. They’re — you know — like  _ us _ . But, not like us. They’re like them. People.” She buried her face in her hands. “I forgot. Just for a minute, I forgot. That, you know.”

Charlie knew.

Jesse had spent the last decade hunting vampires after her little brother had been killed. A few years into her vengeance, she had been turned. Undeterred, she had slayed her way right into Garcia’s arms. Freeing her had been an accident. Charlie imagined Jesse’s life before LA as extremely mercenary, jumping from city to city, hunt to hunt, using her vampire targets as her feeding. For not a single moment could she forget that she was a monster, a killer, a demon of darkness.

Here, she was just some girl at a music venue, part of a secret club in the basement.

It didn’t make things better.

Jesse shook her empty glass. “I could go downstairs and fill it, but where does it come from?”

Charlie knew she didn’t mean the snake beer.

“Monroe sort of accumulates it,” she said. “All his staff, his ghouled security, they donate bit by bit.”

“And tonight we’re gonna blow through that stash. Then what?”

Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know. We drink beer? It’s more economical, in terms of blood.”

Jesse flinched at the word. 

“For a big bad slayer, you sure are a wimp.” Charlie scoffed. “Anime?”

A smile threatened Jesse’s sullen mouth. “What about it?”

“Have some taste, at least.”

“I do. Have you ever seen  _ Cowboy Bebop _ ?”

Charlie laughed. “Nothing that’s called  _ Cowboy Bebop _ could possibly be any good.”

Jesse stood suddenly and wobbled. Charlie reached out to catch her. She stumbled against her and into her arms. Jesse raised her head and, though vampires didn’t blush, Charlie saw the same expression cross her face. For a moment, the world seemed to pause. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from Jesse’s face. The walls parted, strings thickening in the air, unspoken words given by a touch. Charlie couldn’t breathe. Didn’t need to. Didn’t want to break this moment, but too tense to do anything.

The Deathsingers’ microphone whined and the drums crashed. The magic died.

They both had to laugh.

“I haven’t been drunk for a—” Jesse shook her head “—for a-ever.”

“Come on,” said Charlie with a heavy grimace. “Let’s go downstairs and watch whatever monstrosity  _ Cowboy Bebop _ is.”


	3. Sage Amends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: mention of human trafficking

When Jack didn’t know what to do, he always went to Sage. Sage Memorial North Central LA Humane Center and Veterinary Clinic. Somehow, they managed to fit the name on the front of the nondescript building. Technically, it wasn’t really Silver Lake. That weird no-man’s land, sort of Echo Park, but squashed between Downtown and the Blue Barony as people started calling Monroe’s domain, Jack figured it was safe enough. 

And Jack didn’t know what to do or how to feel these days. He put on a good face, straight and tall, wonky smile, but his heart was in knots. He didn’t want to think about that, though, about the Professor being a pile of ash. The Professor would never leave UCLA and not tell his fledglings where he went. He had to be dead. Jack called the speed dial number again. It went to crackly voicemail.

_ “You’ve reached Professor Colin Nelson, of UCLA’s Psychology department. Please leave a message at the tone and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Have a blessed night.” _

Jack dialed it again, just to hear the voice.

He was tempted to change shape again, but he had already walked the last block to Sage. Inside, the mint green and laminate wasn’t so clean, but the receptionist glanced up when the door chimed. Everything changed. Everything stayed the same. Bowl of stale mints, out-of-date magazines, humming TV on a repeat football match, corkboard of lost pets and notices.

“Hey,” said Melissa. She had a nice smile of wonky teeth and thick glasses, though her face was worn and hair unkempt. She turned down the TV. “Nice to see you again. How’s life?”

“Can’t complain. How’re the kids?” Jack inspected the corkboard. Maybe he should go find Dennis the dalmatian. He used to do that a lot, hunting down lost pets. Street rats and crows saw more than most people imagined and, to the right person and for the right price, were always willing to talk. But, then, he came across more dead pets than he liked and had to stop.

“Oh, you know.” Melissa smiled and leaned back. “Tyler’s made great strides in the fingerpainting department. He’s actually managing to keep it on the paper now. Oh, that’s bullshit.” She groaned as the ref made a call.

Jack glanced up. The game had played earlier that day. “Packers win,” he said with a crooked smile.

Melissa glared goodnaturedly. “Hope so. Actually, I was hoping you would come by. I need to give a terrier his medicine.”

She stood and Jack followed her into the back. Sage was a twenty-four-hour hospital, but most of their late nights were quiet. A number of bad tempered dogs and cats boarded as their owners went on vacation and even more held waiting for adoption. True medical emergencies were rare.

The din in the cell block was deafening. At first scent of a vampire, the animals went ballistic. Howling, hissing, some smacking against their cages. Melissa started back before Jack got control of the situation. Most of the long term fosters had Jack’s blood in them and gave a different sort of noise, a muffled desperate whimpering that quieted as he poked fingers through bars and greeted them.

“Oh, you wusses,” grunted Melissa as she pulled a white terrier from a cage. “Meet Archie.”

Jack offered his hand to smell and stretched out Animalism. “How you doing, Archie?”

The fluffy white head cocked to one side, then the other. Animals didn’t communicate with language. Instead, Jack felt an attitude, an inflection, and general assumption.

_ This bitch’s gonna stab me, dumbfuck. How do you think I’m doing? _

Jack nodded sympathetically and scritched Archie behind the ears. “Sometimes we just gotta be stabbed, though.”

_ Easy for you to say, motherfucker. _

“It’ll be okay.”

Melissa handed the terrier to Jack as she rooted through the cabinets for Archie’s medicine. Archie growled. Jack kissed his ratty ugly head.

“A position opened up again, if you’re interested,” said Melissa. “Just a receptionist, not vet this time.”

“Don’t think so. Hey, dumbfuck. You’re sick. She’s not trying to kill you.”

Archie spun around to glare at him.  _ This is a bitch of a world. Everyone’s trying. _

“Yeah, you’re not wrong, but you’re only a dog. No one’s trying to kill you.”

Melissa laughed at his serious tone. She found the syringe and stroked Archie’s head. Gradually, he accepted Jack’s words and relaxed at her touch. Still, he growled. 

“Some people just got a way with animals,” she said wistfully. “Jodie has a hard time finding good workers, but you know she’d love to have you on.”

“Told you, I don’t need your money,” he said gently. “Besides, I doubt I could keep any regular schedule. I’m just happy to help out when I can.”

Melissa stabbed Archie and he yelped.

_ I’m dying! I’m dying! Someone get the undertaker _ .

“That’s too bad,” she said. “Are you here to take them for a walk?”

“Whatever they need.”

Melissa smiled mischievously. “Don’t you say that. Their cages still need cleaning.”

“I’m all yours,” he said, returning her smile.

“You take them out.” She sighed. “I get paid to do this.”

At first, Jack had done as Jodie had insisted and taken the dogs for a walk on leashes. As the curious years passed, the Sage staff had grown used to him and, as he opened the cages of the long-terms, they listened to him in a way that humans probably thought was peculiar. Cats, too. They came on the walk.

The eager energy rolling off the animals was infectious. They didn’t get out nearly often enough and clamoured out the door, leashless. The herd listened to his slightest calls, chirps, and clicks. Especially when he transformed into the overlarge black cougar in the parking lot. The transformation itched in his bones as they creaked and grumbled, but the relief as a creature was mouth watering. The world sharpened, but in a much more bearable way. His emotions muted and the space of his attention was taken up by the rough sidewalk under his paws, the scents of the city on the air, and his youthful herd.

The animals keened but accepted their place. Jack snapped at the air, and the herd followed him down the street to a local park. At a signal from him, the herd split off. Cats climbed trees or found other perches. Dogs frolicked in the grass, rolling around with their tongues lolling out or chasing each other. Their glee was palpable.

Jack prowled through the park and settled himself up in a tree. He didn’t care much about humans seeing him. Sometimes cougars came into the city from the hills. Such was life. It’s not like the animal catcher would come around.

A pair of smaller cats, dragged by a foster mama cat, clamoured over the densely muscled cougar and struggled to find purchase. The little orange and brown kittens, still nameless. Ones he had wanted to give to the Professor, who loved Celeste like a childe. Jack had taken in Celeste, a longhaired ghouled orange cat, but she missed the Prof even more than Jack did. She had to go back to Sage.

Jack mewled and the mama cat understood his pain, bumping her head against him. A yawning hole thumped in his chest where his heart should’ve been. He should’ve spent more time with the Prof, even if he had to put up with Math Class. Jack had to admit, he hadn’t visited often enough, or for long enough, and maybe he should’ve stayed. The Professor was a good man, but not perfect. He took everyone in, which meant that sometimes the ugly pushed out the others. All the sweet understanding talks in the world hadn’t helped when Dogface and Peter Lodge refused to share a room with Jack, on account of his race. Maybe Jack should’ve toughed it out, bit his tongue for the Professor, who had been African-American himself. Maybe it had all been a test set by the Prof, about nobility or humility in bearing the abuse. Jack didn’t think there was so much in it, but now he would never know.

But cougars didn’t have the capacity for such complex emotions and all he felt was grief.

Eventually, the dogs tired themselves out and Jack dropped from the tree, transforming as he fell back into his two-legged form. He whistled for them to follow him back to Sage, which they all did reluctantly.

_ Aw, come on, five more minutes! Jodie always lets us stay out longer. Wait, help me with this stick. Gotta bring this stick back. _

“Nothing I can do about that,” he said bitterly.

The mutt dropped his stick with a whine but followed anyway.

As they returned, Jack felt the sensory assault of streetlights and human scent differently. It meant something, those flashing lights and blood in veins, and he huddled in his jacket against it. He shouldn’t have transformed. It was simpler to be an animal.

Then, he spotted the gas station. Maybe there was something he could do about it. He whistled for a detour and left the herd out in the parking lot.

“You’re in charge, Cordelia and Pepsi,” he told a pair of cats, who nodded like they understood. 

Jack entered the gas station and nodded a greeting to a formerly bored and now stunned pimply teen.

“You got a lotta pets, dude,” he said awkwardly.

“Taking them on a walk,” said Jack as he inspected the flower stand. Some of them were actually pretty nice. Was red too forward? Definitely not roses, that was more Zari’s thing. Yellow, maybe. Nice and cheery. His heart fluttered just like it did the first time, an anxious puddle knotted with shame, the ghost of an emotion half-remembered from his breathing days.

“Of course. A walk,” said the teenager.

Jack bought a bouquet of yellow daisies along with a bag of Skittles and a pack of cigarettes. “Don’t suppose you got gift wrap?” he asked.

The teenager snorted and didn’t bother answering as he rang him up and paid.

As Jack left, Pepsi reported to him, meowing incessantly.

_ Coco and Bailey were bad, sir. Very bad. They tried to eat poor Pepsi. Woe unto what cat feels the cold jaws of death around her neck — that is Pepsi. Pepsi was lucky to escape with her life, good sir. Very lucky. _

“Oh, I know,” said Jack empathetically. “I’m so sorry.”

_ Pepsi knows _ . Pepsi took the opportunity to crawl up Jack’s leg, tiny claws digging into his jeans, and then leather jacket as she perched uneasily on his shoulder. She meowed loudly in his ear.  _ Sir smell like wet angry hound. Uncouth. Pepsi endures. _

Jack smiled sheepishly as he opened the doors to Sage, wading through a crowd of fluff and hot animal bodies. They charged in, thirsty and tired, and he heard Melissa’s laughs before he saw her.

“They had a good time?” she asked.

“Coco and Bailey tried to eat Pepsi,” he relayed, “but Cordelia stopped them. At the park, Teddy-Boy tried to carry home a stick three times bigger than him. He’s still mourning the loss.”

“As we all are,” she said mournfully. She gestured to the flowers. “Got a special night planned?”

“Currently planning,” he said. “More of an apology.”

“Ah.” Melissa smiled knowingly. “Hope she likes it. You’re a real catch.”

She. The wrong pronoun bit him, sharp and sudden, and Jack forced a smile and left in a hurry.

He had taken wings to Sage, but he had learned the hard way a long time ago that only so much transformed with him. Clothes? Sure. Stuff in his pockets? Eh, most of the time. Things he held onto? Not a chance.

And so Jack scrouged for cash and took a cab, keeping an eye on those daisies and daring them to wilt. He wasn’t so much a flower guy. Maybe he could’ve asked Zari but she would’ve smirked like that, that smirk she inherited from Ashley, and her eyes would dance and she’d go,  _ Oh reeeeeaaaallllllly? _ She hadn’t been so pro-Ryu either, as he learned during their awkward drive back after the gang had met him. No surprise there. No one was pro-Ryuko, not even Jack, really. 

So, he spent the twenty minutes it took to get to the rival theatre worrying so much about the flowers wilting that he forgot to worry about what to say.

He broke into the theatre through the back kitchen, as always, and, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom with a greyscale vision, he started to worry. Always, there was the chance that Ryuko would just tell him to fuck off. 

He jogged up the stairs. He hadn’t come back in weeks. Not since the gang had met Ryuko and Ryuko had met Monroe. Jack shoved that from his mind. As Monroe would say, that was business. This was personal.

Jack took a deep breath, smoothed his mullet, and opened the door to the projection room. Ryuko had been squatting here since the early fifties, when he had graduated high school, lost himself in his magic, and never returned to the normal human world. The theatre staff liked him with equal parts magic and charm, working around him as needed. They didn’t dare disturb his nest — which was exactly the word to describe the cluttered magpie den Ryuko had cultivated over five decades. Occult paraphernalia, a dozen books, takeout garbage, and blankets and a sleeping bag littered the room and tables. 

Ryuko scrunched in the corner, sat on a table, with a book on his lap. He was a skinny thing, toothpicks sticking out of tie dye shirts and khaki shorts. He chewed on a talisman as he read. “Put them on the table,” he said indifferently.

Jack set down the flowers, Skittles, and cigarettes and stepped away.

Ryu inspected the flowers with long, deft fingers and gave them a questioning sniff. Satisfied, he set aside his book and dropped the bouquet in a water-stained plastic vase. 

“So, what we doing tonight?” he asked. He tore open the bag of Skittles and threw a handful in his mouth. Roughly, he chewed and swallowed. “Actually, first off.”

Ryuko closed the distance between them and leaned up. Jack barely had the time to recognise the heat of a mortal before the lips touched his. They burned in the best way. Burned away his thoughts and worries. It made the heavy grief in his chest more bearable. Jack wrapped his arms around him, dropping his lips from Ryuko’s to his shoulder. There was only one heartbeat, but he could pretend it was his own that he heard and felt against his chest.

“It’s alright, babe,” whispered Ryu. “You know us. We’re always getting back together.” His fingers carded through Jack’s hair.

“I know,” he said thickly. “Come on, let’s get one good meal in you today.”

“I already ate,” he complained, but his stomach betrayed him.

Jack grinned and ruffled his hair. Ryuko grumbled worse than his stomach, but came along, as Jack knew he would. The Red Dragon restaurant awaited them, even as Ryu killed most of the king-sized bag of Skittles. Downtown was always safe, especially since Jack knew a magic word — Skelter, his sire. They hadn’t exchanged friendly words in years, but any lick from Nine’s gang was as good as gold. Once, one of Mai’s goons from Chinatown had dragged him to Nines, but the Brujah had only laughed. 

The Red Dragon was one of their places. It wasn’t old enough to have any kindred interest, and it didn’t belong to any of Mai’s Bone Flowers. Still, according to Ryuko, it made good noodles. It had most of the trimmings that Jack remembered from good Chinese places. Family run, that same set of cheap restaurant dishes and cutlery, paper lanterns, and lots of red. Jack ordered in Mandarin, and a pair of plates loaded with chow mein, twice-cooked pork, and spring rolls came.

Despite his frame, Ryuko could eat like a horse — one born in a barn and lived at the brink of starvation. Bits of onion and noodle hit the table. He slurped and went through four glasses of Coke — sold by the cup, no less.

Jack watched him fondly. Ryu glanced up, a beard of tentacle noodles dripping from his mouth.

“So, did you eat today?” asked Jack.

He slurped. “That any of your business? I’m on the edge of a breakthrough, man.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Ryu wiped his mouth and crunched into a spring roll. Shards flecked out with every other word. “I’m talking about climbing the Watchtower. I think I’m on to something, Jackie. Old ley lines can be refreshed by the plasmic refractions of untethered spirits…”

Jack wished he had some snake beer right about then. He couldn’t follow it. Ryuko used Jack’s apartment like a library and sometimes Jack cracked them open, reading up on occult theories about the structure of the universe, but, damn, it was dry. The Watchtowers pierced from the mundane world through the clouds of the Shadowlands to the black Abyss. Mages scrawled their names on the Watchtowers and shimmied up and slid down. The books drifted between magic and quantum math half the time.

“...and the spiritual Gecko of Discord—”

“What?” demanded Jack with a laugh.

Ryu smirked and swapped their plates, starting on Jack’s. “Making sure you’re paying attention.”

“What about locking a talisman as a recall point?” he asked. “If you’re going places.”

“Oh, I’m always going places, babe. Good idea, though.”

“Is this gonna be another expedition?” asked Jack.

Ryu chewed on that. “Maybe. Not any time soon, I’ll let you know. It’ll be a big one.” He grinned. “The shit we’ve been waiting for.”

Ryuko polished off Jack’s plate in record speed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. This was how Jack remembered him looking, when they had first run into each other again, decades ago. Still, he was only human, and Jack knew the youth was a mirage. Sometimes, when they hadn’t had a successful ghost hunt in too long, the mirage slipped. The shaggy black hair greyed, tight skin wrinkled, and the jokes about a bad back or aching fingers became dire. For now, Ryu had a sweet fox-like face that always looked like it kept secrets. 

He burped, satisfied.

Jack smiled. “I haven’t been waiting for anything. Just you.”

“Just one more trip up the Watchtower.” He shook his head and his lips twitched in that overeager way. “Then, never again. I’ll tear its keystone and drink the mortar at its base.”

He frowned. “Aren’t keystones at the bottom of things?”

Ryuko groaned. “That’s alright. You don’t need to know. I’ll be able to Ascend. It’ll all be worth it, then.”

Capital-A. Jack read all the same books, went on all the same terrifying failure journeys, and still didn’t get what Ryu was going on about most of the time.

Their waiter brought cleared the plates and brought an overlarge bowl of mango sorbet and a pot of green tea. 

“Where d’you wanna go?” asked Ryuko. Somehow, almost half the sorbet was gone already. “Golden Age Hollywood premier? Concert? A bootlegger party? Wilderness before the white man, huh? Run free, wolfboy?”

“Sounds like a major plan.”

Jack loved these little trips in the past. Sometimes, they even went according to plan. Sure, there might be people, but Jack and Ryuko were always invisible to them, ghosts superimposed through a crack in the gauntlet onto the ley lines of another time.

“Great,” said Ryu brightly. “I just need a fill up.”

Jack grimaced. Nothing was ever that easy. “Alright. What’s the tether?”

“No, no, I’m fine on that front. We can hunt ghosts another night. I’m talking nightblood.”

Oh. That was easy enough. He shrugged. “I’ll give it to you when we get back to the theatre.”

“Actually, I called Monroe,” said Ryuko casually.

Called. Past tense. Which meant that Monroe had said yes. Jack stared, heartbroken.

“What?”

Ryuko licked his lips dreamily. “How old is he? Maybe it’s a bloodline thing, I’m not sure, but it’s smooth like glass. Never seen any medium take to magic like it. So effortless, like stepping—”

“No,” said Jack firmly, silencing Ryu’s meandering train of thought. He poured Ryuko a cup of tea, but he lost interest in his dessert.

“I don’t appreciate being told what to do,” he said coldly.

“I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what  _ not _ to do,” he said. He counted to ten, but never got past four.

“He’s your friend,” Ryuko insisted. “What’s the big problem with me having friends, too?”

“I have no issue with you having friends, but, licks, right now, nightfolk, we’re going through a rough patch,” said Jack uneasily. The restaurant had cleared out this late and he wasn’t exactly scared of being overheard by the waitstaff, but he didn’t like talking about vampire stuff in the open. “It’s not a good time.”

“It’s never a good time,” snapped Ryuko with such menace that Jack started. “Never. I spend my days hunting ley lines for new material, new knowledge, lost diaries. I live in the attic of a fucking theatre—”

“I’ve never told you where to live,” he said, bewildered.

“That’s not the point!” Ryu raised his voice and Jack followed.

“Then, what is the point?”

Ryuko snarled straight yellowed teeth. “That I need a life, Jack. I can do what I want and I’m not gonna have you stop me.”

“Fine. Then, get a job, meet humans—”

“Have you even  _ met _ me?” Ryuko laughed, cold and hard, like shards of ice. “I don’t need you to sign a permission slip for me to enter the world of nightfolk. I’m already there, dude.”

Jack counted to ten again and got further. Seven. He rummaged a hand through his hair, shaking free thoughts. 

“Sometimes people’s dark sides line up in bad ways. I don’t want you to involve Monroe in these Watchtower schemes. And I don’t want him to drag you into our war.” He smiled desperately. “Come on, man, you know I don’t mean no harm.”

For a minute, Ryuko maybe understood, maybe saw his point. Then, the moment had passed, and the hope passed behind clouds.

“Meaning and doing are different things,” he said.

Ryuko threw down his napkin and stormed out. 

Jack groaned and hung his head in his hands. What a mess, again. And it wasn’t his fault, was it? He couldn’t shake the idea that he had said the wrong thing.

A timid waitress came to slide the bill over. Jack had seen her when she had taken her first shifts as a teenager, a daughter of the owner, and now a handsome grown woman. She always seemed terrified of them — no wonder, really. Neither had aged in the last couple decades.

“Has everything been good?” she asked in Mandarin. She flushed. “I mean, by the food.”

Jack handed over Monroe’s credit card. “It was great. Thank you, I — Yeah. It was good.”

He didn’t remember the last time Ryuko had bent the laws of vampire biology and given Jack a migraine and, yet — there it was.

Aisha wasn’t doing so hot. Most fledglings had a lot of adjustments to make. The hunger, the Beast’s impulses, their clan’s weakness, abandoning the human world and learning vampire society — which was more like a prison than real civil society. Aisha also had to face the fact that her absent mother, too, was a vampire and her only contact in this brave new world.

Zari thought she missed her family, her husband, being a mother and wife, but maybe what she missed was the simple life of a human. The emotion hung like a stained old photograph, burning through Aisha’s eyes every night.

They awoke at dusk and, clearly at a loss, Aisha gazed out the living room window, her braids still wound in a silk sleeping knot. No coffee, no breakfast, no early morning news, no work. Depression seeped into every line of her broad, dark face. A face Zari had spied on for decades, though now marred by a touch of grey and death. And hopelessness.

More money had gone into her two-story condo than she had ever had as a mortal. The decor didn’t come from IKEA, but Nieman Marcus. She mirrored the look from the mansions of the hills; crystal waterfall walls, cluttered ceramic and glass sculptures. Gentle R&B played from speakers throughout the house. It was never quiet. Zari hated a quiet house.

Zari tried to remember her own first nights, but they were a tumble of the Beast, battle, and blood. Her sire, a name she fought to forget, had finally been dragged to Therese Voerman and executed. Not unlike Monroe chomping down Garcia. Ashley had found her hiding in an alley.

“I need to go back,” said Aisha in a miserable voice of forced calm.

Zari sighed into the couch next to her. “You can’t, honey. Noel and your dad buried you. You’re dead. Once you learn—”

“You don’t understand,” she said, and she sounded like she was on the verge of tears.

She put a hand on Aisha’s back. “I do understand. I do. I left to protect you.”

Aisha’s eyes flashed and Zari saw the Brujah Beast, frenzy bubbling under the skin. “And look how that turned out, huh?” she snapped. “Protect us? Mission accomplished.”

Zari retreated to the kitchen. Spotless and disused, she pulled a pair of blood bags and poured them into glasses. Cold, chemical-tasting, and sludgy, she focused intently on the simple chore. Charlie hadn’t wanted to drink from the vein. Part of Zari wanted to run screaming to Monroe or to — God help Aisha — to Ashley. She had never wanted to sire, never had a chance to be a mama. Faced with an angry fledgling and daughter, she didn’t know what to do.

“Here,” she said, handing over a glass with a stilted smile. “Drink. It’ll make you feel better.”

Aisha grimaced and pounded both the glasses. Zari would need to feed later, but that was alright.

Aisha’s hands trembled as she finished, as though she couldn’t believe what she had just done. “I need to go home,” she whispered again.

Zari tried to hug her but Aisha pushed her away. “I’m so sorry, but Noel and your dad will go on to live good, normal human lives. Just like they been living for years. I’m sorry you were turned and I’m sorry  _ how _ you were turned, but that nightmare is over now.”

Aisha folded her hands tightly, knuckles paling. “Can I — Can I go out?”

“You aren’t no prisoner, but—”

“Just on a walk,” said Aisha stiffly. “Just, need a change of scenery. Time alone with my thoughts.”

Zari snorted. “You think I was born yesterday, girl?”

The edge of a smile crept on her lips. “You’re looking pretty good for fifty.” When Zari didn’t answer, Aisha continued, “I need to think, but I don’t wanna stay here, not right now.”

“Go to Blue Moon, then,” said Zari. “Ain’t quiet, but Monroe can give you a room upstairs if you wanna be alone. There’s more vamps in the basement, should you want to be with them.”

“I don’t,” she said honestly.

“That’s okay, but I can’t let you wander the city on your lonesome.”

Grudgingly, Aisha accepted and went to change. Zari thought money would go far, maybe, but that was just a pipe dream, an easy answer to a hard question. Aisha had a bunch of clothes now, sure, for every occasion, but that didn’t matter to her. She’d lost more than clothes could replace. 

They were getting somewhere, finally. It was the most words Aisha had spoken to Zari in almost two weeks. 

Zari wished she could stay with her, but that was the thing about vamp life. Too many moving parts, too many fangs in the dark, too many questions with no easy answers.

At Blue Moon, Zari formally handed over Aisha to Monroe, feeling for all the night like a babysitter. As she expected, Monroe offered a quiet place in his office, which must’ve felt like a prison cell. Then, he returned to the main floor and grabbed a moment alone before Zari could make it to the door.

“Are you alright with her?” he asked.

Zari bristled. “She’s my daughter, I have to be.”

Monroe nodded, respecting that. “I will help you. You know that. I won’t ask questions you won’t want to answer, but is there any reason you’re leaving her here?”

“Family business,” she said.

“Is it blood family or Blood family?”

“The second,” she admitted. “I need to talk to Velvet.”

Monroe’s dark blue eyes narrowed and he scanned her. “Is Ashley giving you trouble?”

Zari gave the main floor a sweep. She’d be around too long to not figure the walls had ears and, since their partnership, Blue Moon almost surely had Ashley’s ears, too. “Not yet,” she settled on, “but I want to know what’s what, before it comes to bite me in the ass.”

He stepped out of her path. “Give Miss Velour my regards,” he said formally.

Zari had been to Vesuvius a hundred times before. The strip club folded into a strip of Hollywood that Ashley had prowled for decades. He had helped Velvet set up the club, too, before she had left him. Like Zari, Velvet had left on lukewarm terms. Zari had gravitated to one of Ashley’s only kindred business partners and Velvet to a clan elder and rival, Isaac Abrams. Zari wondered which insult bit harder.

Vesuvius’ dark entry room opened into a lounge designed to resemble a bubbling chic volcano. The poles on stage were onyx, the tables polished granite, and light came from electric candles and glass panels along the floor and walls where chemical lava glowed. A number of solitary patrons watched the girls strip to pounding electronica. Zari spotted Delilah instantly, a red haired bombshell with creamy pale skin and the remains of a green bikini. She had been Velvet’s replacement — a poor one, at that, though far more loyal.

Zari took the stairs to Velvet’s private room and entered, uninvited. The Presence wrapped around her indiscriminately, a blanket of warmth and love and safety. Velvet had a client and straddled his lap, her face and fangs in his neck, while she wore nothing but black and pink lingerie. Very expensive lingerie, too, fine eyelet lace and silk panels. Vampires, of course, didn’t sweat.

Velvet started as Zari shut the door and removed her fangs. She left a lipstick mark on the neck; he left blood on her lips. “What a wonderful surprise, sister,” she said softly.

“It’s been a while.” Zari had almost forgotten the shining silver of her eyes.

Velvet licked the wounds clean, snapped the Presence like a rubber band, took her fee, and swiftly showed the man the door. He stumbled out, still trying to close his fly.

“Anything to drink?” asked Velvet. “I’ve managed to wrangle some drink from that dirty snake, but I suppose you already knew that,” she added slyly.

“I’m alright. Vesuvius looks like it’s doing well.”

“It is,” said Velvet with a ten thousand watt smile. She reclined on a red chair and invited Zari to do the same. “The business of love is always good, only made better by Toreadors.” She reached across to a stone end table and held up last month’s  _ Fifth Estate _ . “Looks like you’re doing well, too, despite that nasty business with Garcia.” She gave a delicate shiver.

“Yeah, that.” Zari grimaced. “You heard about Aisha.”

Velvet’s soft face rearranged itself into an expression of deep sadness. “I did. I am so very sorry, Zari. New fledglings are always terrible, but your own daughter? My heart bleeds for you.”

The overdramatic sincerity took Zari’s breath away for the moment. “I know you haven’t sired and we haven’t talked in a while—”

“Zari,” she said soothingly, “I will do whatever I can to help you. We are dead things, but we don’t need to be cruel things.”

“Thank you,” said Zari thickly. “I don’t know how much she’ll be into the whole vampire dancer thing, but I don’t want her to fall into her sire’s clan, the old guard. For all the family drama Toreadors have, I’d rather she be here than have some El Hermandad put a gun in her hand.”

Velvet nodded empathetically and reached out a cool hand. It stroked Zari’s face. She hadn’t realised she had been crying. “I understand. We all want to give our children the best start we can.”

Zari had never asked. It was before her time. But she couldn’t help but wonder what life they had all left behind, if Miss Velour had been a missus, bore children, had a career, had hopes or dreams. Like Zari had.

“You also might consider our mutual friend,” continued Velvet.

Zari rolled her eyes when she understood. “I don’t want his breed of help — what he did to you and me and those who stayed—”

“I know,” she said, nodding, “but he’s reaching out again. Do you think he allied himself with Monroe because he likes Ventrue oh-so-much? He knew any partnership with a Ventrue would end up with him on his knees, and yet he sought it.”

“You think because of me?” she said, more than a little disturbed.

Velvet took off her towering black heels and stretched out a long leg. “He sent me Delilah, to dance. She’s a lovely girl, all tits and ass and cotton candy in her brain.”

“He reached out to you.”

“He did.” She sighed. “He told me when I left that there was not enough years between my death, that one night I would find it in my heart to forgive him the murder of the sweet naive girl I once was.”

“Did that night come?”

“No,” she said simply. “But, with every passing night, it comes closer. I told him as much fifteen years ago. I also told him it doesn’t matter if I forgive him, I have another sire, a father who has always loved me.”

Zari’s smile tightened on her face.

Velvet cocked her head. “You still don’t like Isaac.”

“I know Toreadors well enough to know that Abrams isn’t going to love you forever,” she said bluntly.

“Nothing lasts forever, not even love,” she said. “All we do is enjoy it and recognise it while it’s still there.”

Zari thought that over and didn’t like the conclusions she came to. “If I give him an inch, he’ll take a mile.”

“Likely two,” said Velvet dreamily. “But it was only a suggestion. I’ve heard that your dear Monroe, too, has fostered fledglings — before this moonchilde.”

Zari didn’t confirm it, though she knew Velvet to be right. Monroe had once told her he had left a half dozen fledglings across America. Camarilla, though, unwilling to cross to the Free State.

A few more pleasantries and Velvet directed their conversation downstairs on the floor. That became the end of their family business, especially with Delilah still up on stage. The Presence in the air was thick enough to taste, reining in the human clients to remain respectful, and raising enough interest to keep money flowing. Zari shared another drink with Velvet and hated how easy it was to like her. Dreamy, seductive, strange, and friendly — and Isaac Abrams’ creature to her core. Nothing was quite so simple.

Before Zari could do or feel something she would regret, she bid her farewells and stepped outside. The Presence withered, but not entirely. Too many damned Toreador. 

And there he was. For a moment, Zari thought it was a mirage. Then, he crossed the street. Vampires never changed. As much as the ageless immortality was a bonus, it curdled the heart. He looked the same as he had that night he had found her in a gutter, having fled her sire’s execution. That mischievous smirk the same he had given her when he handed her a vessel she couldn’t resist. When he let her cry into his jacket about her family and the human life she had lost. 

“You following me?” she demanded.

“Yes.” Ashley inspected her. “How’s VV?”

“Great.”

He nodded. “Good to hear.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned on a lamppost. He said nothing, but his sinister presence unnerved her. He raised his sunglasses to rest on his hair. Same sunglasses, same quirk she had seen a thousand times, but it felt like a threat.

“What’re you playing at?” she asked. “I’m not—”

“Come back.”

“ _ What _ ?”

She had never seen him look like that. He did his best, but a fragment of worry etched into the corners of his eyes. The thought of him being unable to control his emotions startled her, touched her — and then she realised it was almost certainly deliberate. Almost. But what if it wasn’t? Then, it was gone. 

“Monroe has a whole barony to eye out for. With me, you’re one of four.” He glanced to Vesuvius. “Five, maybe.”

“Things haven’t changed.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Of course, they have,” he said waspishly. “We’re about to go to war and we are on the same side.”

“You don’t trust Monroe,” she gathered.

“I don’t trust anyone with things important to me,” he said in a way that made it clear he thought it a compliment.

“Don’t you dare call me a thing,” she said darkly. She gave him a shove but he didn’t move.

He sighed. “Can we focus on the second half of that?”

“Not when you insult me in the first.”

“What would it take?” he asked seriously. “Why did you leave in the first place? I never hurt you. Monroe is just as much a killer and criminal as I am.”

Zari’s lips parted, but she shut them again. Part of her bubbled with anger she thought long buried. It wanted to smack him, to curse him out, tell him to fuck off and never speak to her again, that if he didn’t know she couldn’t help him. Hope of the impossible damned her. That maybe he was the same man who had saved a fledgling and expected nothing for it. Then again, good deeds didn’t make good people.

She should walk away again. She didn’t.

“Just because you never hit me, doesn’t mean you didn’t hurt me.” The words cleaved away a piece of her heart.

Ashley absorbed that unwillingly. “Rearing any fledgling is guaranteed to hurt them. I can’t apologize for it.”

Zari couldn’t explain it and she knew he wouldn’t understand. That drowning humanity in an orgy of blood and careless murder changed someone irrevocably. And not for the better. And he knew it and loved it, the art of corruption. 

“I don’t need your apology.”

“I didn’t kill you,” he said heavily. “I get why VV left. From my blood-childer, one out of four’s pretty damn good.”

“You killed who I used to be.” Zari used to work in advertising, a boring office job as a secretary. Nine-to-five, skirts to the ankle, natural hair abused and straightened to an inch of its life, demure makeup, young babies at home, a soft husband.

“You can’t be a vampire with a conscience,” he said flatly. “It just doesn’t work out well. Never. You’ll spend the rest of eternity miserable.”

“I should’ve been allowed to decide that for myself,” she snarled. She struggled to hold back her tears.

“Maybe,” he allowed, and that was more than she expected. “But that’s the past. In the present, what can I do? Is it the drugs?”

“More the human trafficking,” she said lightly with a hard look. “Not a big fan of the underground slave trade you got your sticky fingers into.”

Ashley had the audacity to laugh. “You are joking, right? I mean, we drink blood. Some of us don’t like hunting.  _ Someone’s _ gotta supply that. Are you taking offence that I dare make money on it?”

“I’d rather get my food free-range and organic,” she said coldly. “Besides, I know you’re not only selling to licks.”

“Ah.” He nodded knowingly. “That was it, then?”

“That was it,” she confirmed.

A handful of years into their time together, she had dug deeper into his operations. Wide and deep, they probably extended further than most vampires’ did. When Ashley had first come to LA, the Italian Mob was dying to other racial gangs. He built them back up into the Sons of Angel, expanding their ethnic origins, and the organized crime syndicate gave him most everything he needed. Money. Drugs. Blood. Muscle. They, too, had their own human interests. Pornography, prostitution, racketeering. It was how they made that money. Then, Zari had found out the overlap between porn, prostitution, and the circulatory system Ashley offered to licks.

“You made me an accomplice to evil,” said Zari. Her voice shook. It was an accusation she had leveled at him before.

His answer was the same.

“No one twisted your fangs. No one forced you. You chose—”

“And I chose to leave.”

Ashley had nothing to say to that. His eyes fell to the ground and he nodded. “And you chose to leave,” he repeated. “Alright. I’ll need something else. I run the Sons only so long as they let me. If I rip out one of their schemes, I need to replace it with something just as profitable and find out a new free-range, organic way of selling hot blood.”

Zari stared. He was willing. He had agreed. He would do whatever she needed in order for her to come back. This was just business now, haggling over details. Maybe he wanted her close so he could use her to spy on Monroe and shore up their alliance. Maybe he could only stand the blow to his ego so long. Her heart said different. That was the terrible thing about Ashley. Everything sounded reasonable and heartfelt, when almost nothing was.

“I’ll figure out a new scheme,” she said, licking her lips. “You cover a way of selling blood.”

Ashley smiled, a knowing secretive little smile, and glanced towards Vesuvius again.

“Oh.” That was why he reached out to Velvet.

“It’s a good idea, isn’t it?” he asked. “Lick comes in, orders a private dance, pays VV under the table, and drinks their fill.”

“Not bad,” she admitted. Not quite free-range and organic, but close enough. Paid employees, paid to sell a service, who got to go home to their families and live human lives. “Just…” She turned back to him. “Tell me why you want me to come back. And don’t give me bullshit about Monroe and the Cam.”

Ashley studied her, unsmiling and unblinking, for almost a minute and his eyes softened. “Is it that hard to believe that I miss you, darling?”

“Yes,” she said plainly.

“Good. I had worried Monroe had turned you stupid.” He smirked. “We have our differences and I’m not one to go on about bleeding hearts and families, but this petty feud — bitching and sneering and secret-keeping against someone who means you no harm — that’s for peace time. This ain’t gonna be peace for long.”

Zari feared all this talk of war would come to a head, that Monroe and Ashley with their experience in Camarilla cities, were right and LA was in for a world of hurt. In that world, she couldn’t have Ashley Swan be her enemy, Monroe’s enemy, or Aisha’s. It was too dangerous. Who knew what he could do? Monroe would never say it, Aisha would never ask it, but they counted on her to bridge this gap. 

It wasn’t because he batted those big purple eyes at her. 

It was business. 

“Do we understand each other?” he asked, extending a hand. “Are you in?”

“I’m in.”

Zari shook his hand and he pulled her into a hug. There was plenty of time to resist, but she let him hold her in his arms. He was taller, leaner, and smelled of lilac perfume and cologne. Resentfully, though not as resentfully as she thought, she returned the hug. The turmoil of emotions weren’t inflicted by Presence, but, deep down, she felt herself respond to his words.

“Welcome home, childe,” he whispered and he kissed her hair.


	4. Gray-Pacific

Kindred didn’t fear or respect him so much to leave him alone as he sat in a solitary booth. He was neither foolish nor arrogant enough to think so. They merely enjoyed his blood and circuses. His humans were another matter entirely. Monroe had his favourite vessels and his types, like all kindred, and Blue Moon saw enough foot traffic to ensure a certain percentage of orphans. His current favourite, a spritely dame with more lipstick than sense, clung close to him and jabbered excitedly.

She loved the decor, the drinks, the inflection of that bass rhythm before the chorus —  _ right there _ — and him most of all.

He hadn’t even bonded her, let alone ghouled her.

He drank her appreciation, rather than her blood. It would be more alcohol than blood at this point of the evening, and he did not need that tonight.

Then, Zari slid across from her and the girl evaluated her and glowered.

“Matt,” she began in a tone he knew too well. Zari wore a stylishly overlarge black sweater. It draped over her slender form, gold glistening in the dim at her ears and wrists.

“Please, no.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to ask,” she protested.

“Who’s this?” the vessel asked waspishly.

Monroe drifted a hand through her blonde hair. She sighed into the touch. “A friend of mine,” he said. “Don’t be rude, Erin.”

“Ellie.” Her limpid eyes frowned in hurt.

His hand slunk down her face to her lips. “ _ Forget _ ,” he said plainly. The last moments passed by and she would chalk it up in the morning to too much to drink. “Please, run along, my friend and I have something to discuss.”

The vessel stood, uneasily, uncertainly, and ambled back to the bar. Zari’s eye followed her.

“You’re a real charmer,” she said with a snort.

Monroe knew the hypocrisy in her accusation. “I’m sorry,” he said briefly. “I left Dawson to guard the elevator—”

“I don’t give a shit if you summoned up an army of ghosts,” she snapped. “You let my daughter  _ escape _ .”

“And I apologized. Though, I was not under the impression you left me a gaoler.” He glanced behind her. “Where is she now?”

Zari leaned back. “Left her with Ashley.”

“Is that any better?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said coolly. “It’s the way I was reared.”

Unable and unwilling to continue arguing, Monroe let Zari steam. Ashley’s methods couldn’t be argued with. Well, Monroe could argue, but he kept his opinions to himself when they were truly unwanted.

“The fuck are you wearing, by the way?”

Monroe glanced towards the Deathsingers. When not on stage, they made themselves at home in the pit, the bar, the basement. He couldn’t shake the history that they had been Garcia’s loyalists, displaced with his death. So long as he provided a stage and blood, they should stay. Did not mean he trusted the kindred of his domain. He did not like the feeling of mistrust and suspicion that crept along his neck. It was familiar in the worst possible way.

“Let’s talk upstairs,” he said.

Surprised, Zari reluctantly swallowed her anger and followed him to his office. He had wasted all the time he could afford to, anyways. He locked the elevator behind them and scanned with Auspex to ensure their privacy.

“Well, don’t you look fancy, double-oh-seven,” drawled Zari in a way that reminded Monroe unsettlingly of Ashley.

“I’m going to the Gray-Pacific Club,” he said simply.

Zari snorted. “What nightclub’s got you dressing like that?”

“Not a nightclub. More of a gentleman’s club.”

“Strip club?”

Monroe leaned back against his desk and grimaced. “Elysium.”

He watched her search her memory bank, scouring for the obscure word. “You’re kidding,” she whispered, perfect eyebrows inching towards her hairline.

Monroe gestured downstairs. “Ask the Reapers. The Camarilla has landed, with one hell of an ugly scourge. If I don’t get ahead of this, there is a good chance that we might be next on the chopping block.”

“They’ll never let you out of there alive,” she said. She groaned. “Matt, I came here to yell at you.”

“Yell, please,” he said. “I wronged you by not looking after your daughter adequately. She could’ve broken the Masquerade, died, killed—” She looked to interrupt but he rested his hands on her shoulders. “I know what I’m doing,” he said solemnly. “Trust that all those decades in the Camarilla left me with  _ something _ . Elysium rules that everyone is allowed safe passage coming and going.”

More than anything, the boon Pieterzoon held over his head would ensure his survival if nothing else. Such an investment was worth protecting.

Zari nodded. “Fine. But I’m coming.”

“Absolutely not.”

Zari swept a hand to indicate his tuxedo. “You think I don’t have a black tie dress somewhere?”

“I think this prince’s court will be very old, very Old World, and very old-fashioned,” said Monroe pointedly. “There are thousands of rules of conduct. If I were going to elysium in New Orleans, yes, that would be something else.”

The city’s name  _ dinged _ in Zari’s mind. “Ashley comes from New Orleans. At least take him.”

Monroe had his doubts about that. Kindred had a hard time ridding themselves of their native human accents. The fact that Ashley worked so hard to hide it — successfully, most of the time — was suspicious enough.

“I do think the very last place Ashley Swan would ever want to go would be an old English gentlemen’s club,” he said. “But, I promise, if things aren’t as bad as I fear, I will take you next time and you can suffer alongside me.” He forced a stilted smile. “Now, you can yell at me. I have another ten minutes or so before I absolutely must leave.”

Zari took a big gust of air and raised a finger… and it left her. “She’s only two weeks old. I’d be more surprised if she hadn’t broken out one night. It’s not long to grieve.”

“I’d rather it happened naturally,” he said, but as soon as he gave his opinion he knew it to be unwanted. He thought of Aisha with Ashley’s other childer, lost in the orgy of blood and murder, for ten, twenty years until it washed away humanity and any vestige of conscience.

“If allowed, she will waste years falling into a pit that we have all avoided, with no one able to help pull her out.” She scoffed. “What do you think? That we can send her to a human shrink?”

“No. I merely think that it is better to face your problems head on rather than bury them for a decade.”

Zari’s lips tightened into a cross line. 

“I mean nothing by it,” he said as apology.

“If she faces them now,” she said quietly, “she will want to go back, to her family, and she’ll think,  _ Oh, but they only buried me a few weeks ago. Nah, it’s fine. _ She needs as much distance as possible between her and then.”

Monroe nodded and checked his pocketwatch. He hadn’t worn it for years. He had forgotten how it slipped so easily into his hand. It carried memories with it. Not good ones, for the most part. It shone in pristine antique gold, but felt more bloodstained for it.

“What’re you scheming for?” she asked shrewdly.

Monroe bristled at the word. “I don’t scheme.”

“What do you want with the Tower coming? You made a domain grab with Garcia’s death and now this?”

“I want the coterie and kindred living under us to survive this,” he said. “That’s my only priority. Everything goes towards that.”

She jerked back. “That’s what I mean. You’re aiming so low. I thought after Garcia, you’d find your ambition again. I mean, before Garcia, we were in talks about expanding the zine to other Free States.”

“The Camarilla forces you to aim low and say ‘thank you’ if they let you have it,” he said darkly. Monroe avoided her eye. This conversation danced too close to Pieterzoon. It was only a taste of the worse to come, he knew. “We’re living in a different world.”

Zari stepped closer. “Something’s going on with you,” she said. “If you tell me I don’t need to know, I’ll believe you.”

Monroe considered her. “What makes you think something’s going on with me?”

“Matt.”

Zari was the only one to ever call him that. Sometimes, humans did, but that didn’t mean anything. Not truly. 

He couldn’t lie. Well, he could. It would be far too easy.

Monroe leaned forward and took Zari’s hands. “Regardless what comes, my priority first and foremost is and has always been this coterie. Your survival, your prosperity. You, Jack, Charlie, Aisha. Jesse Harper, if she stays loyal to us. My people.”

Her grip strengthened in his. She swallowed. “Matt, I’m not some dumb neonate. Whatever you’re planning, I want to hear it.”

“I’m saying that we might have to leave LA behind us one night,” he said. “We might need to agree — however temporarily — to live under the Tower and plan our escape rather than be executed. I’m asking you to trust me, as I trust you. Trust that I have your best interests in mind.”

Slowly, Zari shook her head. “So, when his kettle boils over, you just want to knuckle under and submit to the Tower?” she demanded.

“The Anarchs will want war—”

“Damn straight. No one here wants—”

“—and I don’t want war,” he finished in a hard voice. “In an ideal world, I can tell the prince to pack his bags and he will. If he doesn’t, a lot of Anarchs will die. Many of them don’t know what’s good for them. That, if they postpone their  _ libertas _ to keep their lives, they can always find it again. Can’t find life beyond the Final Death.”

Zari wrinkled her nose. “You have any idea how many would want to sink their fangs into you for that?”

“Oh, I know, but you asked for my plans.”

“Starting to regret that.”

“Because how much sense they make?”

“Because you’re just as reckless and dumb as I thought.”

Monroe inclined his head. “You can think what you want.”

Zari’s eyes searched him. “You used to plan these things with Hawthorne, didn’t you?”

He dropped her hands like they burned him. “I need to go,” he said brusquely. “If I don’t come back, look after Charlie for me.”

It was only half a joke and Zari did not reply.

It was the tux, he decided. Once, he had resisted the severe formality, insisting it didn’t suit him. It was tradition and, regardless his petulance, he wore it anyway. He was right. It didn’t suit him. And so, he became a different Monroe. He never liked what suits did to him. It was why, while he wore a jacket most nights, shirked slacks in favour of jeans and abandoned the tie and polished wingtips. Now, there was nowhere to hide. A ghost stepped in his skin.

Monroe drove himself. He didn’t like driving either and he strangled the steering wheel to an inch of its life. Maybe he should’ve hired a limo or a driver, or used Dawson, his unwitting ghoul and head of security at Blue Moon. The ghouling was pragmatic, as much as it twisted the devotion. Summer ghouls were always twisted. It shamed Monroe each time he looked at Dawson, knowing that one night he wouldn’t stand it anymore and simply bring the man behind the Masquerade. After that, there was no going back. Worse than death, to a normal human.

Barty Vaughn, or at least his scourge, had wiped the Valley in two nights of bloody slaughter. In that, they had blood, business, and more land than most would need. If he were humble, he and the court could stay there and broker peace with the rest of the Anarchs.

Seeing as he commandeered Gray-Pacific, there would be no such peace.

It hung on the edge of the Downtown barony, inching ever closer towards Isaac Abrams’ Tinseltown of Burbank and Glendale, insulting both him and Nines Rodriguez. Abrams hadn’t been heard from in a few nights. Some whispered he had died in the Valley purge.

That would be another problem for another night.

The Gray-Pacific had also been an elysium of the Ventrue of the last Camarilla prince, Don Sebastian, who Garcia had diablerized in the Revolts.

Monroe stopped across the street, to gather himself.

From the street, the ground floor looked like a church or an English manor house, rain-streaked in the torrential winter rain and gray. But on top of all that were fifteen, twenty stories of stone and leaded glass windows. Doormen in fancy blue coats popped out of the front door seconds before limos and town cars drop off gentlemen in fine suits. A few had women. Not many.

He knew exactly what waited for him inside. The rich and old would drink and lie and conspire and play while, outside, the homeless rooted through the dumpsters under torrential rain. High above, vampires would amuse themselves and, as Zari said, scheme.

Monroe groaned and ground his palms into his eyes. He hadn’t been to elysium in years. Three years. Was that all he got? Three years free of politics, of double-speak, of schemes, and kneeling, and yes-sir-ing. It was not enough, not by far. Had he been alone—

But he wasn’t alone. And so, it was not worth contemplating what else he might do. He  _ did _ have a domain and kindred who counted on him.

Monroe turned on the radio and scanned channels. Five more minutes. Frowning, his fingers slipped off the dial.

It was an innocuous Beatles song, almost cheery in the lonely night. He hadn’t listened to them in some time, caught up as he often was with modern music. The Beates had been the first concert he had attended with Hawthorne, in nineteen-sixty-two. Dominate had gained them backstage access. He probably still had the ticket stubs somewhere. He threw little away.

His relationship with Miss Hawthorne had always been stiff and formal, as that between ghouls and kindred ought to be. Their years of solitude, on the road, had softened things to more of an employer and a valued employee. It hadn’t been until she shared her passion for music that they had become anything approaching friends. Every time she shared an album, genre, or artist, Monroe would devour them and then, suddenly, ten years had passed and there was another. And another. Humans had boundless ability to reinvent themselves, it seemed. 

More than once, they had abandoned a city and the shallow roots Monroe had set down, to drive across the country and catch up with a concert. The only material possession he had kept was the absurdly large collection of records, tapes, and CDs. Most were signed. Many had photos tucked into the sleeves. Hawthorne hadn’t taken them. Not a single one. It felt like she had closed the door behind her. 

She had been so beautiful. All kindred and ghouls were trapped in a stasis, from the moment the Blood touched their lips, but Hawthorne had a life in her — a sunkissed tan to her skin, a blush to her cheeks, breath in her lungs — that only enhanced her stillness. All the century Monroe had the pleasure to know her, she wore her hair the same, tight coiffed curls, and wore blacks. Loose black blouse, black trousers, black hair, soft black eyes that hardened to flint with a cunning smile.

A hand rapped on the window.

Monroe scrambled to turn off the music.

It was Anton Ritter, carrying a large black umbrella.

Monroe rolled down the window. “I’ll be there in a minute,” he said irritably.

Ritter clicked his heels. “Sir, my master has informed me that you should not leave your vehicle to Gray-Pacific’s valet service. I may take it.”

Bad omen.

While it was phrased so politely, it remained an order and Monroe wore a suit. He knew to obey. They traded the car key for the umbrella. Ritter risked a private smile with him before sliding behind the wheel and parking it elsewhere.

Monroe gave the umbrella an unfortunate glance. Very droll, Pieterzoon. On the metal handle, a gold sword-and-scepter had been engraved.

The doormen gave him no trouble. Inside held no surprises. The club had been done up with dark hardwoods, glass cabinets, ornate staircases and deep leather chairs. Cigar smoke clung to the carpet and tapestries. The lobby pealed off to other rooms, and an old-fashioned and rickety-looking cage elevator ran up alongside a staircase like guts through a man.

And there were men. Human men. Elite humans, old families of politics and wealth lucky enough to be accepted into the gentlemen’s club. A discreet ghoul at the desk nodded for him to head onwards.

Monroe took the stairs and followed his nose, until the scent faded. For six decades, the Gray-Pacific had been untouched by kindred influence. Even now, the influence was a deft touch, almost unnecessary. Monroe knew from experience that most Ventrue were at home in places such as this. Aside from the welcome scent of blood, it only made him more uncomfortable.

He did not see another kindred for another two floors. And, even then, it was not a jovial reunion. Carlyle Lorraine was Barty’s childe, Clan Ventrue’s whip, and a wearisome adoring brat if there ever had been one. 

Frustrated though determined, Monroe exchanged known lineages and introductions with the kindred he had already met.

“Have you been here before?” asked Lorraine politely.

Monroe forced a smile. “I have not had the pleasure, though word reached me that the prince was holding elysium this night.”

“The prince, my sire, is,” said Lorraine, leading him into the elevator. “As clan whip, it is my duty to assist and unite the clan in any and all needs pertaining to courtly affairs. May I escort you?”

Monroe tensed but followed. Gears clanged and chains clinked. It felt even more unstable and rickety than it appeared.

“You came alone,” said Lorraine. Monroe did not answer or so much as blink. He continued, “Well, then. Kine tend to entertain themselves on the lower five floors. If you have been exploring you have encountered their game and socializing dens. If you wish to participate, you have the prince, my sire’s, permission, though it is forbidden to feed. The following five are predominantly private suites, many of which are occupied by the reigning court and their childer, as well as staff quarters, storage, and private lockers. The top five are almost entirely rented by the Keeper of Gray-Pacific Elysium every Friday evening, from dusk to dawn, and consist of additional suites, ballrooms, an art gallery, and there is the roof-top patio.”

Monroe committed it to memory, thankful for the succinct delivery through regretting he would be remembering Lorraine’s nasal whine.

“And what of women of our kind?” asked Monroe. “Surely a gentlemen’s club will become suspicious if too many women enter unaccompanied.”

Lorraine tossed him a scathing look. “That is a problem for the keeper. You and I have better things to preoccupy ourselves with.”

“That we do,” he said wearily.

The elevator jerked again and he couldn’t suppress the flinch. He could run up these stairs faster. The elevator kept climbing, to the top floor.

Monroe’s mind lingered on Lorraine’s mention of private lockers and storage. More than one gentlemen’s club had become elysium. Not only were the humans within ripe for Embrace by the high clans — Ventrue, Toreador, Tremere — but many made excellent ghouls or tools, for their power, wealth, and station but also their secrets. Such clubs tended to have boarded-up dead spaces where secret things get locked away. Literal skeletons, proud momentos of shameful deeds, delicate wooden boxes of cocaine or heroin. Bribery, only waiting to be used.

Lorraine led him to the art gallery.  _ Gray-Pacific Gallery _ , the brass sign said. How imaginative. The scent of humans was drearily thin, but not that of blood. Barty had enough of a court to hold regular elysium. Dozens lingered about the classical paintings and sculptures. Nothing too modern or avante garde, everything traditional and tasteful. To the untrained eye, it might’ve been an exclusive black tie gala. Black tuxedos, floor-length gowns with silk or fur wraps, murmuring polite conversation, and white-jacketed waiters carrying trays of glasses. 

But. Glasses of blood. A handful of Nosferatu openly wore their shape; others wore fangs. The murmuring conversation held a tense air of suspicion, laughs hiding narrowed eyes. Even talk of the art carried the same landmines.

Done his job, Lorraine vanished among the people. Monroe lifted a glass from a waiter and sniffed. Vintage from downstairs, of course. Fatty, rich body, and elderly enough to be orphan. It was as good as blood got.

He didn’t know any of them, but they knew him. He held himself steady as he moved purposefully through the gallery. Whispers followed. Already, he had outlived his short welcome.

Monroe found Bartholomew Vaughn at the end of the gallery. He only knew it by the accumulation of symbols — a small golden circlet, a chair, and the group standing around him — but not immediately by face, which was impressive as kindred didn’t change. The Barty he had known had frizzy rough curls that were as coarse as iron wire; muscled like a girl’s dream and not anymore fond of shirts than Ashley Swan; heavy dark brow and piercing stormy gray eyes. He slouched and glowered and spent most of elysium shagging Tremere men and women and disrupting the socio-political peace of San Francisco. 

When Monroe approached, Prince Barthomolew Vaughn was talking Sabbat battle strategy with someone who only could’ve been the scourge. A tall, dark figure in a duster and cowboy hat, with pallid skin like maggots.

The prince’s eyes flashed with recognition and a small, polite smile greeted Monroe. “I didn’t think I would ever see you again, Mr Monroe,” he said, his voice soft as sin.

Monroe bowed graciously and fell to a knee. It was his place. He extended his hand in offer to the prince, who, as per his place, offered the ring and veins to be kissed. Respects paid, Monroe stood and answered, “It’s been a long time, Your Highness.”

The herald, an unfortunate Tremere who the prince had sent to Monroe before, found her voice. “You have the honour of addressing Prince Bartholomew Vaughn of Los Angeles, Prince of the San Francisco Bay, Lord of the Clan of Kings, Ninth of the Line of Mithras the Sun, childe of Quintius Prolate.”

Like every other man there, the prince wore a tuxedo. Black and tailored and out-of-date, with highly polished shoes. His frizzy hair had been tamed, sleek and cut straight. Must’ve been cut each night by a servant. On top, he wore a small unadorned circlet of gold. The iron ring he had kissed still burned Monroe’s lips like unearned shame.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” said Monroe with a dry mouth.

The prince’s lips twitched. “You get any titles since the last time we met?”

Monroe folded his hands. The small jerk of an almost-smile filled him with wasted hope. “I wouldn’t mind a herald, but I’ll give it myself. Matthew Monroe of the Clan of Kings, Ninth of the Line of Artemis Orthia, Captain of Silver Lake, childe of Alastair Fowler.”

The scourge laughed outright. Monroe caught held his eye, dark under the brim of the hat, but he didn’t back down. He was older even than Monroe thought. LA hadn’t seen age like this since before the Revolts.

“Funny names Anarchs come up with,” grunted the scourge. “You got a boat, captain? Any shore or dock to moor it?”

The prince raised a hand to silence him and spare Monroe the pain of answering. His eyes, dark and unfathomable, scoured Monroe intimately and he did his best to not falter. More than anything, he wanted to summon Pieterzoon from whatever den he had crawled into. This was elysium, goddamnit. The archon had to be here.

The prince stood. “I want a minute alone with the autarkis.”

Unable to argue, his court let him leave and Monroe followed. The whispers behind them hissed like a kicked wasp nest. Some Anarch baron, come in here and steal away the prince. Assassination! Ooh, who would be next to the crown? Seneschal? Herald? Consort?

The prince led Monroe to a private suite. It was decorated in much the same way as the parlours downstairs. Windowless, with heavy buttoned leather chairs, the gleaming oak furniture and paneling smelling of polish. The prince took a key from his pocket — a master key, Monroe would later learn — and locked it behind him.

The prince laid a hand alongside Monroe’s face and sighed, his own face breaking into a wicked grin. He clasped Monroe in a bone-crunching hug. “Goddamn, it’s good to see a fucking friendly face around here. You haven’t changed at all, cousin!”

Stunned, Monroe could do nothing but accept.

By the time the prince set him down, he still hadn’t recovered his senses.

A warning growl echoed behind him and he jumped at the deepness of it. A colossal lion leapt gracefully from the bed, thick golden mane shining and smelling of perfume. He padded towards the prince and never took his black eyes off Monroe. The creature growled again.

“Easy, Mithras,” said the prince, scratching him behind the ears.

“You have a lion,” said Monroe faintly. “And you named it after your methuselah.”

“Mithras was British. British lion. Lions are kings?” Barty sighed. “Alright, I stole it off some drug lord in the Bay who liked his exotic pets, happy?”

_ Happy _ was about the furthest thing from Monroe’s mind, which existed in a crackling void of static.

Barty chuckled and gave him a solid pat on the chest. “Don’t look at me like that, you bastard. What’s got between you and Petra anyway?”

“Petra,” he repeated dimly. “Right. Petra van Allen. Your herald?”

Barty wrestled the bow tie off from around his neck and his fingers set to work on the top buttons. “She’s a good woman, just a bit protective. Stern. Stiff. I mean, she  _ is _ Tremere.”

Monroe laughed in disbelief. “You still — You’re still fond of Tremere, I take it?” he said, because, even if Barty hadn’t changed as much as he feared, a Ventrue still did not ask his prince if he fucked warlocks.

“I fuck them, if that’s what you mean.” More comfortable, Barty went digging through a chest at the back of the room. Mithras settled back down on the carpet, his great head on his paws.

Monroe pointed out the door, back into the gallery. “Was that spectacle just for my benefit?”

Barty emerged from the chest holding a bottle. “You should’ve seen your face, cousin,” he said, delighted. He pressed the bottle into Monroe’s hands. It was a special vessel, charmed by Tremere to hold blood like a vintage wine without the blood losing its lustre. “I’ve been saving this for you,” he said reverently.

“Thank you, Your Highness, for the gift—”

“Fuck off with that, and you do that now,” said Barty as warning. “It’s your sire’s.”

For the second time in the suite, Monroe lost his senses. “What?” he whispered.

“I bled him for a few weeks before I killed him,” he said darkly. “Same as I did to mine. Figured you would want a few dozen bottles for special occasions.” He smiled, wild and charming, and Monroe felt like a neonate again, hiding out from his sire at the pier and cursing the Tower in private. 

But Fowler was dead. He had to die in the Revolts, and Monroe had asked Barty to kill him personally. Monroe turned the bottle again until the blood caught the light. It shimmered like rubies.

“Tonight’s a special occasion,” said Monroe.

Barty’s smile grew and he produced a bottle opener from the same chest. “Was hoping you would say that.”

It tasted like God. Better than Garcia. Better than his first. It made his head swim with a tidal wave at every sip, the potency lighting his bones on fire, and the justice sweet on the tongue. The fire came from terror in Fowler’s last nights, the smallest fraction of what he had put Monroe and his long-dead blood siblings through. And Monroe made Barty promise he did indeed have more bottles. “Twenty-seven,” he clarified. “I did save thirty, but I already drank some. Sorry, but, not, you know?”

He talked endlessly of his court and the petty dramas. The love of his nights, Tremere Petra van Allen, hated the court’s enigma and spymaster, a disturbing Nosferatu named Clam. “His face, get it, is so plush with this hard shell-like thing?” said Barty with a shiver. His seneschal, the beautiful and vindictive elder Victoria Ash, had been forced on him by Pieterzoon, who came as a secretive archon and ambassador. Monroe stared. It just rolled out of him like stress at the end of a long day. Trust? Monroe deeply wanted it to be trust, and have it be deserved.

Barty wormed the story of Garcia out of him and was an appreciative audience, cursing and laughing, and giving his own dark thoughts of vengeance. “I don’t even know what I’d do if some ugly Anarch fuck fed on Carlyle’s baby brother,” said Barty. “Probably keep him on tap, so I’d never run out.”

They had flopped into a pair of handsome leather chairs, each of them growing more and more casual with each glass, until Barty had thrown his legs over the arm of the chair and Monroe discarded his jacket and slunk lower. The empty bottle sat between them. Mithras rolled over the rug, larger than either of them, purring contentedly.

“Were you ever an Anarch?” asked Monroe.

Barty licked out his empty glass, oblivious or indulgent to the invasive nature of the question. “Maybe. No. I don’t know.” He snorted. “That’s not such an easy answer. I guess, I hope I’m the same as you. Why’re you out here in this arid celluloid wasteland?”

“Baltimore,” said Monroe, and he needed no more.

Barty shrugged. “I’d have pardoned you. I already sold my soul. Didn’t have much to lose. Hell, even now, I don’t have much to lose.”

“You’re  _ prince— _ ”

Barty set his glass down too hard and hairline cracks wove up the delicate crystal stem. “You know what a baron is?” he asked in a hard voice. Those eyes dug daggers into him and didn’t give him a chance. “A baron has all the responsibilities of a prince, with none of the tools. I’m sure you’re learning that, if not you will. Tell me you got backup? Some court-that’s-not-a-court that can help you, mate?”

“I know what you’re doing,” said Monroe softly. He didn’t want to break the spell. He would love to continue the charade. It felt like friendship. But he would not give a Camarilla prince information. “And my people would rather go to war than join the Ivory Tower. I came here to barter for independence.”

Barty’s brows and face fell, crestfallen. “I’m not doing anything,” he said, hurt.

The worst part was that Monroe could never believe it. Barty had ruled as baron and now prince. He wasn’t the same slick wretch who was a crippling and constant disappointment to his sire, corrupting neonates and making a nuisance of himself. And Monroe was not that neonate.

“And,” continued Barty, “you’re not paying attention, if you think I control a goddamned thing. Do you think the Camarilla just rode in on a white horse, for free? To save the Bay from misrule and tomfoolery? No,” he snapped. “There was a price and I’m motherfucking paying it.”

“You sold your soul,” Monroe repeated, knowing and dreading the answer. “To whom?”

“The archon to Hardestadt,” said Barty bitterly. A chill weaved down Monroe’s spine. “Jan Pieterzoon. I made him a blood oath, to help return the rest of the Free State to the Cam. I’m almost done. Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco.”

“Los Angeles,” he finished. He clawed a hand through his hair. “ _ Why _ did you ever swear a blood oath to an elder?”

Blood oaths were messy, part tradition, part magic, as far as Clan Ventrue went. A mutual oath sealed with a mutual blood one-part bond, cursing the target to die if it went unfulfilled. Even to convince Pieterzoon to drink wasn’t any great accomplishment, as the elder almost certainly was immune to smaller bonds by virtue of the full bond to his sire.

Barty sighed. “I’ll tell you but, I want a blood oath to  _ me _ that you’ll come downstairs and we’ll take a cute vessel.”

Monroe pursed his lips at Barty making light of something so dire. “There aren’t any cute vessels—”

“There’s a half dozen fuck-dens between here and the ground floor, and not a sober girl in them.”

Barty Vaughn knew how to take his pleasures. He took delight in frightening young neonates with the ember at the end of his cigarette, even learning fire-dancing from a mortal girlfriend — not vessel,  _ girlfriend _ . He traded ghouls endlessly, making a roaring trade in the pretty and salacious with nuanced blood. He fed beyond the need for blood, well into the pleasure and excess of it, mixing it with other vices. Drugs, sex, the hunt. More than once, he had tried to convince Monroe to feed on addicts, claiming kindred did not feel addiction like mortals.

“I will,” he said reluctantly, as it was a small price to pay for the information. “Why did you swear a blood oath to Pieterzooon?”

“I joined the Anarchs because I was sick of being my sire’s slave,” said Barty. Six decades had done little to quell his anger. “I took the title of baron to stop another from taking my chains, but I only became a slave to my people. Alone. All the problems, none of the ability to solve them.”

Monroe smiled. “You’re such an idiot, cousin.”

He snorted. “Careful there. I am still your prince. What did you come here for anyhow? What’d you say? Bargaining?”

“I missed you,” he said with more honesty than he intended. “I needed to know how you were.”

Barty reached out a hand and slapped his down to clasp Monroe’s, half drunk on the aged blood vintage. “Neonates never change,” he said wryly. “It’s my big theory. Once you really get adjusted to unlife, you don’t change — mentally, emotionally, physically. Tell me, mate, have you ever met a vampire who’s changed since their Embrace?”

“No,” he admitted, but this was another question Barty didn’t care for his answer to.

“You haven’t,” he continued. “I’m staking my eternity that you’re the same sour-faced, take-no-shit, honest, loyal bastard you were as a neonate.”

Monroe started. “What do you mean?”

Barty’s hand clung tighter and he grimaced. “I mean I’m not an idiot. Ever since I came down here, my court’s ballooned up, full of scheming flatterers just waiting to stake me for dawn. I want you on my side, cousin.”

There was no Presence, no drug in the blood, no blood bond, no plea by clan traditions, nothing to cajole him but Monroe’s own desire. Wanting things was very dangerous. 

“I have some conditions,” said Monroe hoarsely. “My domain, it includes Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and Hollywood. Given time, I think I can persuade them to join the Tower peacefully. For now, I want a guarantee they will not be harmed, purged, or otherwise assaulted.”

Barty had the grace to look ashamed. “You think I’d do that?”

“I know the Valley’s been purged. Caine knows what’s happened to Isaac Abrams.”

“I didn’t know about that until Edwin came back,” he said hopelessly. “That scourge Pieterzoon dredged up. I — I managed to unify the Bay, just like this, getting all the barons to the bargaining table and agreeing. It’s out of my hands here, though, and I’m sorry for that.” He took his hand back. “So, your people won’t be hurt, I can make that a priority.”

“When it joins the Camarilla, I want to remain their warden,” said Monroe, still trying to digest that Edwin Wolfsbane was in town. That alone should’ve been enough to convince the Anarchs to wave a white flag. “LA’s big enough that it should have wardens like the Bay or New York.”

Barty nodded with rapt attention. “Anything else?”

So long as he was agreeable, Monroe would keep going. “Ventrue Primogen.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah,” said Monroe dryly. “A pot of fey gold, your little pearly whites in my neck, and Hardestadt to rock me to bed at dawn.”

“Alright, come here.” 

Barty lunged and Monroe barely managed to fight him off. He bore fangs, clicking inches away. Monroe pulled him by the hair, laughing, and the teeth snapped at thin air.

“Get off me,” he grunted.

“I’ll work on the fey gold and get Pieterzoon on Hardestadt,” said Barty thickly.

“You killed my sire,” said Monroe, shaking his head. “I don’t want anything else. You set me free.”

Among the Anarchs, such a sentiment would be suspicious coming from a Ventrue. Back outside, in the Camarilla court, it would be a death sentence even if most would envy them. 

Barty stopped trying to bite him and dropped himself back in the chair, retracting his fangs. The mention stole his bravado. “Promised I’d kill our sires for what they done to us,” he said sincerely.

“You did.”

“Only once,” he said bitterly. For several minutes, he was lost in the reverie, a dark endless abyss of memories Monroe knew well. He extended his hand as the only comfort he could offer. “My sire broke me as one breaks a horse,” whispered Barty. “Testing my limits, shackling me, bringing fists and fangs to bear upon every inch of my body until I was convinced who I had been was only a pleasant dream.”

He swallowed. “Perhaps they shouldn’t let Ventrue around horses.”

But Barty didn’t hear him. “And now I’m surrounded by them. I’m sure each of my court have left abused fledglings behind them. Don’t you argue,” he added as Monroe opened his mouth. “Call a spade a spade. I doubt either of us are going to dish the deets, but they abused us. Just because they all do it doesn’t make it right.”

“When did you sire?” asked Monroe. “Lorraine.”

Barty half-smiled. “Me and Petra chose the two of them. Remus and Carlyle. They were brothers, once, but decided on different names when blooded. We flipped a coin, back in fifty-two. I’m a bit worried that other Cam Vents are gonna get to him, but he’s a good kid. I think Remus takes after me more, really, but that’s not really how siring goes, is it?”

Monroe’s own bitterness of siring cut deep, but if he couldn’t confide in Barty, who could he? “I sired my ghoul,” he said heavily. “Do you remember Hawthorne? My sire’s head of house? She was dying and her wish was to let her die.”

Barty’s smile washed from his face. “I’m sorry. She’ll understand what you did one night.”

“I hope so,” he said wistfully. “But that’s a problem for peacetime.”

“I think this war is going to be a lot more complicated than even you would dream of,” said Barty in all seriousness. “Pieterzoon just told me that a new ancilla is trying to claim praxis over LA. Some lick from New York. Does the name LaCroix ring a bell?”

Monroe shrugged. “Hundreds of licks passed through New York when the Sabbat fell.” But, even as he said that, he found his mind working and sliding the puzzle pieces together. “Barty,” he said, “I can’t be seen helping you or your court, but this ancilla is something very different. I need you to tell me everything you know about LaCroix.”

Barty didn’t have much. Just some snotty cousin of their’s. He thought maybe of the Line of Antonius, but that only made Monroe snort. The whole point of Ventrue proclaiming themselves by the childer of Ventru was a hokey horoscope. Monroe’s ancestry as an Artemis Orithan marked him as a legacy builder — despite only now, after a century and a half, setting down any stone of a legacy. Then again, Mithridati like Barty were supposed to be coldly impersonal and stoic.

Monroe detangled himself from the prince and parted ways, with many gratuitous assertions that they would see each other again. It tasted of desperation. Monroe had much to discuss with Pieterzoon, if he could find the damnable archon.

It didn’t take him long. Ritter appeared suddenly, as though taking off Obfuscate, though out-of-clan Disciplines were impossible for ghouls to learn. The sudden appearance told Monroe that Pieterzoon had wanted him to first meet the prince.

Ritter led him to another private suite a floor lower. As Monroe remembered the long elevator trip, it became clear why this was such a delightful elysium. Floors upon floors of privacy. Some elysia had no more than a closet to have clandestine conversations.

Pieterzoon rested in a suite not unlike the one Barty had dragged him in. There was no Presence here. He didn’t need any. Slowly, he nursed a glass of whiskey, eyes distant.

“I hope you weren’t waiting long, sir,” said Monroe.

Jan Pieterzoon stood to greet him. “Not at all.”

For an elder of three centuries, Monroe might’ve expected something involving a frock coat or other period dress at elysium. Age awarded privilege. Pieterzoon wore his customary tailored blue suit, same as ever, though he looked at home in the dated setting. He was the image of Nordic nobility, dauntless and unblinking behind small brass glasses.

Monroe should’ve knelt. He should’ve bowed. Pieterzoon and he shared an understanding and mutual distaste for the trimmings of formality and power. Against his better judgement, he felt himself relax. The life boon should’ve hung over his neck like a guillotine. Pieterzoon held the power to ruin him, yet he never disrespected or dishonoured him. 

The two of them had grown somewhat close during the Siege of New York, when Pieterzoon had kept Monroe on retainer for most of the nineties. That respect and candor lingered still. Had Monroe not insisted Pieterzoon take his boon, perhaps they would have found kindred spirits.

“I trust Tara Keanry has been useful,” said Monroe.

“Very much so, thank you. Prince Tara has been reinstalled and has promised to quell the turmoil of her city.” He inclined his head. “She does not know of your involvement.”

“I appreciate your assistance with Salvador Garcia, as well.”

Pieterzoon peered at him sternly. “Mr Ritter has returned that sentiment to me least a dozen times, Matthew. I have received it.”

Ritter left in a hurry, closing the door too loudly as he made his escape.

“Even so, I wish to say it.”

Pieterzoon indicated a pair of chairs and sat. A closed folder and glass of whiskey sat there, only one. Only one kindred he knew ever drank human drinks. Monroe followed.

“There is only one thing I wish to discuss about Garcia before we put his legacy to rest with his spirit,” said Pieterzoon. His voice grew an edge. “Why did you diablerize him?”

Diablerie. Amaranth. Consumption of the soul. Absolute bliss for the taker and prosecuted harshly by the Camarilla elders, who feared their childer. Monroe’s aura betrayed him, spiked with black, as it would for years.

There were a hundred lies for it, but not here. He had not confronted the answer but knew he had to give it.

“Because, in spite of every time I have told you that I have standards and wish to treat the Anarchs with dignity, I wanted to make him pay.”

It was not a good answer. Monroe could see the disappointment in Pieterzoon’s eyes and longed to take it back. 

“It was a deliberate decision on your part?” he asked.

Monroe folded his hands in his lap. He dug his nails into the soft palms to remain steady. “Would you rather it had been a loss of control?”

“I would have rather you simply taken his head. And what have you told questioning Anarchs?” Pieterzoon’s eyes burned with disgust. Monroe was shamed to realise how it hurt.

“None have asked, but I will tell them that I served Salvador Garcia what he did to Don Sebastian. Garcia’s legacy is in ruins.” 

Monroe trailed off as he realised Pieterzoon cared very little for what he had to say. He had turned away, head bowed, and let the silence admonish Monroe. It did. Very well. He didn’t regret the diablerie. Aside from the raw pleasure and vengeance of it, it only added to his reputation. So far, all the Anarchs had were half-heard stories that, when they met him, they assured themselves weren’t true. Diablerie wouldn’t shake so easily. Monroe knew what they saw when they looked at him. Some distant, mild-mannered Ventrue playing rebel. Now, they saw something different.

Most elders had committed most supposedly unspeakable, heinous crimes — ones they executed lesser immortals for among the Camarilla. Rampant diablerie characterised the Sabbat, a greed for power and pleasure with no regard for others. As if the Camarilla were such fawning humanitarians.

All the excuses in the world wouldn’t shake the fact that Monroe had done something dishonourable and no one, even Garcia, deserved such treatment. He had let himself down.

Pieterzoon let him reflect on it minutes more before sitting and observing him close. He felt as small before Pieterzoon as he had before his sire, though Pieterzoon was far crueler in his silence than Fowler had been with all his violence.

“What is your impression of Prince Bartholomew after these years?” he asked politely.

Monroe grimaced. “If it is not a ruse, he hasn’t changed at all.”

“Do you believe it is?”

“Yes,” he said, without hesitation. “He has ruled too long among us to not become crafty. What do you believe?”

“I believe he is useful, for now, though he acts the cloying buffoon,” said Pieterzoon distastefully. He took a long drink from his glass. “He has delivered the Bay, almost entirely without violence, and Sacramento was Anarch in name only and remained receptive to his business dealings. You have delivered Prince Tara safely, though that is owed more to luck than skill.”

Monroe refused to let himself be jealous of Barty’s work. It was such a petty move of Pieterzoon.

“Your time will come,” Pieterzoon promised, and Monroe realised he had misread him, anticipated the worst of the man.

“Like Victoria Ash?” he asked. Monroe knew he treaded dangerous territory. For all the peace between them, Monroe was still but an ancilla, a kindred of far lesser age and status.

Pieterzoon’s eyes became ironic. “I am sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Was that a joke?

Monroe smiled. Ventrue to a one appeared to possess bone dry humour, if they possessed any at all. He had forgotten it. Missed it.

“Where did you hear about myself and Victoria Ash?” asked Pieterzoon.

“I have my sources. A Setite in my domain.”

“May all our sources be as accurate,” he said. “Yes. Victoria Ash’s betrothal to Tegyrius solidifies the entry of his clan into the Camarilla, as well as the peaceful union of Camarilla and Ashirra. They prefer to refer to themselves as the Banu Haquim.” 

“Under your watch,” noted Monroe. 

Betrothal. The very idea was ludicrous. Who ever heard of vampires  _ marrying? _ Kindred did not use marriages like political alliances. And yet, here Victoria Ash was, kept close under Pieterzoon’s eye as Madame Seneschal of Los Angeles, and arranged to be married to a Banu Haquim elder. And much like Barty and Monroe, Pieterzoon had indebted her to him. Tegyrius had the mythical age and ability to become a justicar, the ultimate authority and power on his clan in Camarilla domains. He would owe it all to this marriage. Pieterzoon sat like a puppet master in the distance. When LA inevitably slipped into Camarilla hands and Barty fulfilled his oath, Prince Bartholomew Vaughn would owe him, too. Hardestadt surely held his own strings. And so the Danse went.

“I gave Hardestadt my sire’s blessing, yes,” said Pieterzoon. “As his Voice, I inducted the Banu Haquim into the Camarilla. Regardless,” he continued, “my role in California is chiefly the matter of the Anarch Free States and returning them unto Camarilla law.”

“And now the crown has claimed and purged the San Fernando Valley,” said Monroe, knowing surely Pieterzoon sat on that war council. Barty claimed distance from the deed. Only Pieterzoon would truly command the former archon, Edwin Wolfsbane, though as scourge he should’ve answered to the prince.

“Yes, and how is the mood among the Anarchs as to that?”

As ever, Pieterzoon required his honesty.

“It was brutality without warning or precedent. I have one gang in my domain as refugees who are telling stories of a cowboy scourge. Vultures fly overhead when Edwin enters a domain with his pack of feral direwolves.”

Pieterzoon nodded shortly. “Excellent.”

That one word did more to paint Monroe’s future than any fortune of Charlie’s could have. Pieterzoon did not intend on converting LA, as he had once mentioned. This anti-Camarilla sentiment the purge strummed up would never die. They would burn LA. And Monroe would help him do it. He gathered himself as tightly as he could.

“You’ve mentioned your domain twice now,” said Pieterzoon calmly. “Not a barony or realm, merely domain, though I am led to understand it contains multiple neighbourhoods of rich resources. I’ve heard your subjects refer to you as their captain.” A spark of amusement lifted his voice.

“Is there a question, Mr Pieterzoon? I am autarkis, as I have been for almost sixty years. I work for the betterment of our kind rather than empty ideals or sects.”

Pieterzoon folded his hands. On his right, he wore a heavy iron ring, his personal sigil on its face. Six stars for his Generation, the crossed sword and scepter for Clan Ventrue, a rook for his sire, and his Embrace year. 1723.

“No question,” he said at last. “Merely a notation. I will let you run your domain as you wish, trusting the manner in which you will master it. Soon, it will matter little but, for the meantime, I ask you to continue business as usual.”

It was a consideration he didn’t expect. Monroe didn’t realise how much he feared for his position until Pieterzoon allowed him to have it. The thought of being  _ allowed _ to have it quelled his relief and filled him with new dread.

“Thank you, sir.” The words scraped his throat and heart. Monroe didn’t know he still had one.

“If I require your services again, I will arrange Mr Ritter or another of my staff to find you. I will ensure you know their identities.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pieterzoon handed a brown paper folder over. “Currently, I have limited intelligence of the Los Angeles Anarchs. That which the court of the last attempted praxis maintained is both suspect and out of date. Make notions and additions as you see fit.”

“Yes, sir.”

Monroe glanced through it. He striked through names, adding new ones as he had heard of from other baronies. “I’ve kept a census of my domain,” he said with some guilt. A blank page at the back already waited for him.

“I expected nothing less, Matthew.” Pieterzoon took a sip from his whiskey.

Monroe’s handwriting faltered more than once. He could not lie. A life boon was inviolate. Nothing was off-limits. He drew the brood trees. Gary Golden and his childer. Ashley, his trio, Delilah’s black sheep of a childe, Alice Zhao, who remained in Monroe’s employment after escaping the Swans. He gave every scrap of information he knew. Disciplines, Embrace years, allies.

He paused, for too long.

“What is the matter?”

Monroe shut his eyes. “Mr Ashley Swan has brought to LA a… method of alchemy. He claims thinbloods only are able to produce the formulae.”

Pieterzoon shrugged. “I am aware of this magical science. I expect a great number of obscene magical practices lie in the heart of LA. I will let the prince deal with them.”

Monroe raised his head. “Should I add the alchemy under Mr Swan’s name?”

“Oh, Prince Bartholomew won’t see this,” assured Pieterzoon.”This is for my knowledge alone.” He took the folder back and kept a hand on it.

“Is that all, sir?” asked Monroe wearily.

“Eager to return to the salon?”

Monroe chuckled. “Not at all. Honestly, I’m dreading whatever entertainment awaits after the gallery.”

“I will spend most of my night here.”

It felt like an offer. Monroe longed to accept it, but his people would worry or, worse, come looking for him.

“You don’t fancy elysium either?” he asked..

Pieterzoon cleaned his glasses, but gave a small smile to himself. The expression was unnatural on his face, not sculpted or manufactured, and all the more sincere for it. “Not at all. This sparing with words and reputation is more the proclivity of roses. While I would not decline a game of chess, here, nothing is as simple or as free.”

Monroe returned the smile. “I would offer, but I know you would beat me.”

“You mislike losing?”

“Oh, always.”

Pieterzoon’s smile grew a small fraction. Almost mischievous. “Maybe I’ll let you win.”

“That’s no true victory.”

“So, it is not that you mislike loss, it is that you desire victory.”

Monroe felt his smile drain away. Nothing was so simple or so free. Pieterzoon realised his words had lost their lightheartedness.

Monroe reached into his waistcoat and showed the pocketwatch. It bore his own sigil. Nine stars for his Generation, the sword and scepter, the little upside down V that marked his descent from Artemis Orthia. 1873. It had been a gift from Prince Lodin of Chicago upon his acceptance into the clan. He kept it as his one concession to the Camarilla clan.

“I am a Ventrue,” he said. “One way or another, I will win.”

“Good thing there can be many victors,” said Pieterzoon. His eyes lingered on the watch. He had been present that night. Surely he remembered it. “I apologize for my hasty choice of words,” he said heavily. “Would you stay for a game?”

Monroe felt free to decline. The words, despite the customary blankness and heavy Dutch accent, were sincere. The smallest inch of freedom. Pieterzoon could merely command his presence in the name of his boon. Yet, he gave him a choice. Monroe felt his mind spin towards conjecture and hidden meanings, but he silenced it. 

“I hear the branch of Ventrue who formed the Ashirra favour Go as we do chess,” said Monroe. “In spirit of the future union of the sects, perhaps we should give it a chance.”

Pieterzoon considered him and, slowly, that small unnatural smile returned. “Do you know how to play?”

“No. I’m sure you do.”

The smile returned and it stretched into Pieterzoon’s pale blue eyes. “You will lose.”

“Then, that is a sacrifice I will have to make tonight.”


	5. Just Get Along

“Wakey, wakey, motherfucker,” called Jack. His fist hammered on the door. 

Not her door, though.

Charlie ran a hand through her mussed staticy curls and reluctantly crawled from her bed to open her door. Jack stood in front of the door across the hall. She leaned against the doorframe.

“Trying to wake Monroe like that?” she asked.

Jack turned to her, abashed. Between the leather jacket and towering, strong build, it was a magic trick to look so small and embarrassed. “Trying to wake the dead, actually.”

“Ah.”

Unlike her, Jack had his own place. She had only heard of it, some apartment not far away, though she often imagined him having a nice nest or burrow somewhere. As much as he liked people, he liked his animal forms better.

Jack took another look at the door he had been banging on. “Captain still sleeping here?”

Charlie shrugged. “I think Monroe still lives by the reservoir somewhere. Why’re you banging on my door at the ungodly hour of—” She checked her watch “—seven o’clock?”

“I was going to make a sweep through our domain,” he said with a too-casual shrug. “Thought you’d maybe want to join me.”

Charlie squinted. “Monroe put you up to this.”

Jack couldn’t think of a lie better than a very unconvincing, “ _ No _ , me? What do you mean?”

“I don’t need babysitting,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “I get it, but I’m fine.”

Jack’s expressive eyebrows lowered. “Are you sure? I mean, after your funeral? A lot’s happened in the last few months.”

Charlie chewed on her lip. “I will be fine,” she said, trying her best not to think of all the reasons she was not fine. “I just need time.”

Jack raised a finger and a crooked grin. “Ah, but would a motorcycle ride help with that?”

She smiled to herself. “Teaching me how to turn into a bat would help with that.” As though to remind him that she hadn’t forgotten their last teaching of Protean, she focused her energy — her blood — into her eyes. At once, the night vision took effect and blinded her. She shut them tight, aching. “Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah, don’t do that indoors,” he said with a laugh.

Rubbing the spots from her eyes, Charlie blinked her normal vision back in. “I signed up for bats not night vision goggles.”

Jack reached out a hand. Charlie gave him one of hers. Rough callouses stroked her knuckles. “What about Wolverine?” he asked with a glint in his eyes. “Eh? Talons?”

He held up his other hand and the nails and fingers lengthened to wicked sharp claws. 

“That is pretty cool,” she admitted. “Will that get me around to a wolf?”

“Eventually,” he promised.

It took them a good few hours, along with a lot of swearing and stealing blood from Monroe’s stash, but Charlie managed something. They weren’t as thick, black, and crunchy-looking as Jack’s claws but they felt dangerous.

She struck a stance and hissed. Red-tinted sweat itched down her forehead and she carefully wiped it off with the back of her hand.

“Tell me it won’t be so hard next time,” she said. She felt like an almost-empty ketchup bottle.

Jack leisurely flexed his hands, the claws forming and retracting like a cat’s. Then, he tensed, growling, and bony protrusions burst bloody from his knuckles.

Charlie jumped back, then laughed.

When the bony spines retreated, Charlie stared in horror at the torn skin, even as Jack healed it. He reached for another blood bag, choking down the chemical-like fluid.

“On second thought, maybe I don’t wanna be Wolverine,” she said. “Looks painful.”

Jack pointed a finger. “But  _ cool _ .”

Charlie gave it a third thought. “Maybe next time.”

Jack reclined on the bed, pleased.

She sat next to him. Her room on the second floor of Blue Moon could be mistaken for any high-end hotel room. Stupid high thread count bedsheets, with the cover, lamp, and everything a little too matchy. No windows, naturally. A mix of animal and human blood stocked the minifridge and the dresser had a stack of old editions of Zari’s zine,  _ The Fifth Estate _ .

“You ever work out more Obfuscate?” she asked.

The only way for vampires to learn Disciplines outside the three native to their blood was to drink from other vampires. Just a sample, but the threat of the blood bond loomed over them. One drink with friends. Two for lovers. Three to make a slave. Charlie and Jack had shared only the once, and that was a few weeks ago now. Maybe it had worn off. Charlie didn’t feel any different.

As answer to her question, Jack faded from view. The bed and pillow still held his indentation but he was, for all intents and purposes, invisible. Charlie clapped politely. He returned to the visible world and inclined his head.

“Thank you, thank you.”

His invisibility had only highlighted his aura. She bit her lip. “Can I tell you something? You don’t need to elaborate if you don’t want.”

Jack shrugged, still smiling.

“I’m sorry about Ryuko.”

The smile became more stilted. The pointing finger came back.

“That’s freaky,” he declared. “Like, I get Malkavians  _ know _ things, but… that’s freaky.”

Everyone had an aura. Auspex lingered in her being like a sight and static she could never seem to turn off permanently. Like all vampires, Jack’s had a bit of a white glow around him, like an outline. At the edge, other colours flickered. Charlie had begun to listen to the Cobweb when it told her about them. A dull silver, almost gray, and shot with sky blue. Grey, for sadness, maybe regret. Blue, for love? Pink and red were love colours, but the Cobweb was adamant. Blue for love.

Charlie and the rest of the coterie had met Jack’s boyfriend only the once, in a horrific excursion she would rather not repeat. She still wasn’t sure quite  _ what _ Ryuko was, but he hadn’t come back with them and Jack was determined to keep him secret — and safe.

“Is he alright?”

“He’s about as alright as you are,” he said pointedly.

“Was it something we did?”

Jack shook his head and scowled. “Just — We’re going through a rough patch. That’s all. It’s not the first time he’s got some stupid, hair-brained scheme. He doesn’t like it when I give him a dose of reality. After all, he’s a mage.” He wiggled his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “Anything we can do?”

“I’d really appreciate every vampire, aside from me, forgetting he exists,” said Jack. His eyes lingered on the distance. “I’d also really appreciate if  _ he _ forgot, aside from me, that vampires exist.”

Charlie swallowed her lips and felt bad for asking. “So, uh, Monroe wanted you to scout out our mighty realm?”

A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “It  _ is _ pretty mighty.” With a job to do, Jack began to find himself again and he stood. “Besides, I know he’s got a lot on his plate.”

Charlie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Sure, sure, playing baron.”

“I wish you had gotten to know him a bit better,” said Jack. He grabbed his leather jacket again and it slipped over his shoulders, turning his back on her. “You know, before we got independence here.”

Charlie took her cue and stripped off her sweats, replacing them with jeans. “We’re just… different people,” she said. “I don’t think a few months would’ve made me like him any more.”

“You’ll realise,” he said. “There’s a lot more Ashleys and Garcias in our world than there are Monroes, let alone yous and mes.”

That didn’t make her feel better. In fact, it made her feel a lot worse. Most of the time, he didn’t feel like a real person to her. More like a robot, or a mannequin. Once, maybe twice, he had reluctantly opened up to her and she felt like she was watching a dog dance the hula. It solidified the obvious, that it was better to keep close to Monroe than Ashley, but only left her with more questions.

Charlie hitched up her denim jacket. “I guess, after that month of chaos, I just don’t feel like I know the guy at all. Like, what’s his favourite animal? What does he do for fun? Does Monroe even have ‘fun’?” she added darkly.

Jack chuckled. “Sure he does. Ever see him in the studio?”

That stopped her short. “Studio? What sort of studio?”

“Recording studio. Yeah. He produces all those bands that play here.”

Charlie tried to imagine it and struggled. Something didn’t match up between his pristine preppy image and the grungier rock bands. “Huh. Weird. So, what exactly are we doing?”

“Census, kind of,” he said. He turned them down the hall and hit the button for the elevator. “Talk around our subjects, see what’s what, make sure everyone’s happy. Tell them to go bother Monroe if they’re not.”

They took a trip downstairs, into the vamp-only basement. There wasn’t any hot ticket tonight, but the basement still had more people than Charlie had seen before. Every night there seemed to be a new face.

Jack seemed to know them all by name. He greeted every table, introducing him and her as part of Monroe’s coterie, the Fifth Estate — yes, like the zine, yes, we know Zari — and small talk. Charlie was pitiful at this. She felt like turning invisible more than once, but Jack’s presence kept her bound.

“You promised me a trip on the new motorcycle,” said Charlie, irritated. “This doesn’t look like the open road.”

“There are still more people,” said Jack quietly.

The Deathsinger trio sat in the back corner — normally  _ their _ corner — with a ton of patchworked clothes and dusty motorcycle boots. Charlie wasn’t Rubio, but she heard enough to know the Asian duo Midnight and Thao were Vietnamese and sisters, turned by opposing clans. Toreador and Brujah. Their third wheel, Lionel, was a Jewish Caitiff and good friend. Each of them had a cup of snake beer in front of them. Despite their threatening appearance, they appeared thrilled to meet them.

“Oh, man,” said Thao Do. Her teased black hair reminded Charlie of seventies hair metal bands. Her eyes and fangs sparkled with black eyeliner and lipstick. “Damn, that was a helluva night.”

Charlie gestured to Thao’s sleeve of skulls and guitars. “Orsay’s work? Looks sick. Should’ve got her to do something for me.”

Thao and Midnight, pushed up their sleeves to show off more of the work. It wasn’t exactly a tattoo. There was no ink involved. Rather, Orsay had changed the pigment of their skin to be red, blue, void black, and other colours in her drawings. The metallics in Midnight’s nebulas looked completely otherworldly, the stars like a thousand imbedded diamonds.

“The Fiend’s a hell of an artist,” said Midnight.

Charlie knew it was bad manners to ask what they had exchanged for it. The Red Witch drove a hard bargain, doing work for favours or fresh human corpses.

“We figured you guys would come along,” said Lionel. “If not, we would’ve found you.”

“For?” asked Jack.

“Domain, dude,” said Thao. Her smirk became more of a sneer. “If we’re looking to move into the Blue Barony, what sort of dirt patches are still around?”

“Nuh-uh,” said Jack. The friendly air harshened at once, though Charlie didn’t quite get it. “Monroe’s not doing domains. One for all, all for one.”

“Kinda bullshit is that?” demanded Thao. “After that night on stage—”

“Which you got paid for, in cash,” said Jack. He sat back and raised an eyebrow. “You telling me that three vamps, such as yourselves, can’t find a hunt between Silver Lake  _ and _ Hollywood? Dude. There’s, like, a hundred humans upstairs.”

“Where can we live, though?” asked Midnight.

“Wherever you want,” he said. “Make your haven and your business wherever you want. We’re not building some wasteland where you only get shit if you can claw and shoot your way to it, or hide from those who will. This is home, if you want it.”

“How can we keep someone off our turf if we got… no turf?” asked Thao, confused.

“How did vampires get like this?” asked Charlie, looking to Jack, Thao, Midnight. Whoever would answer her. “Humans live together just fine. Ever heard of neighbours?”

“We’re not exactly teddy bears,” shot Thao. “I’ve spent forty years here. The only reason I’m still here is because I’ve killed those gangs who wanted us dead. Now, how can you promise me that we won’t get jumped when we settle in?”

“I’d wanna know that, too,” said another voice.

Four chairs scraped across the floor and four more vampires pulled up to the table. The one next to Charlie was the one who spoke. Despite the perpetual youth of most vampires, his face looked lived-in and his flop of black hair even more unkempt than Jack’s mullet.

“Who’re you?” asked Charlie uneasily. The rest of the guy’s gang looked like they had seen as much rough living as him.

“I’m Orion,” he said. His voice was cigarettes and exhaust fumes. “We’re the Reapers. This is Slater and Crow.”

“And him?” asked Jack, pointing to the last of them.

He waved. “I’m Jeff Sullivan.”

“Jeff,” repeated Charlie dimly.

“You got a problem with Jeff?” demanded Orion.

“No, no. No Jeff problems.”

“Look, we  _ barely _ made it out of the Valley alive,” said Orion. His lips tensed and pulled into a fanged snarl. “Most of us didn’t.”

“LA’s rough now. All of the Angels has become a wasteland,” said Jack empathetically. “Garcia’s old gang splintered. Some ran back to East LA, not enough to stave off the Sabbat there, but most just started their own raider gangs. Mostly, there isn’t anyone who can enforce peace.”

“This weren’t raiders,” snapped Orion. “I know what raiders look like. It was one lick, Cam and I’d stake my fangs on it.”

Jack frowned. “What’d he look like?”

Orion gritted his teeth. “Big,  _ big  _ scary-looking motherfucker. I swear, ravens and vultures started circling overhead, chasing us out of the Valley.”

“Like a cowboy,” said Jeff. “I’m talking the duster and hat. And then…”

Orion put a hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “It was wolves, mostly. Not lupines, just wolves. Feral monsters, like ghouled. This lick was some Gangrel. Old and powerful. Camarilla. He never said a word, just hunted us down like dogs.”

Jack scratched his head. “I can’t be promising safety from the Cam, but Monroe won’t take it well if some cowboy motherfucker starts with his people.”

“Sorry about your gang,” said Charlie.

Her words stole some of Orion’s edge. He sighed. “Yeah, well. Molotovs will do that. I liked it better when we just shot at each other. Then, it was sport as much as rivalry. Without Garcia to pin it down, everyone figured it was open season.”

Charlie grimaced and had to turn away. She couldn’t help but feel partly responsible for all the chaos. Maybe they could’ve just talked Garcia down.

“How long have you guys been here?” asked Jack.

“Few days. I figured I liked our luck better with a cape than the Voermans.”

“Monroe ain’t a cape,” said Jack. “He’s not even Tower.”

“He’s old. He’s high clan. He’s a cape. Should get used to it.” Orion shrugged. “Tell me he’s got some kind of manpower to rustle the war parties. Otherwise, I might have to take our chances with Nines — and he’s as likely to throw us to the Sabbat as open his doors.”

“Go if you want, no one’s keeping you prisoner.”

Charlie interrupted Jack. “How big are these war parties? Just, like, a regular group?”

“Five or six, yeah.”

Charlie made an obvious head count. “Between the Reapers and Deathsingers  _ alone _ , we got seven. Me and Jack make nine. We all want to live in peace, we all can defend that peace.”

“Why should I trust some random gang blown in from the Valley?” Thao laughed coarsely.

“Because Charlie’s right,” said Jack. “If a war party decides to raid Silver Lake, you both want what Monroe can give you: a promise that you and everyone else he let’s live here will be here in peace.”

Charlie groaned, her already small amount of patience worn thin. “Can’t we all just get along?”

Thao chewed on that and didn’t like the taste at all. “I know you’re new, but nowhere works like that. I’m sure as shit not scared enough of Monroe to think that others are. I’m fine to be peaceful, but why would they be?”

“Because we’re decent people?” suggested Charlie like it was obvious. “We all want to be left alone, live our own lives.”

This, at least, both the gangs could agree on. Thao caught Orion’s eye and laughed.

Lionel snorted. “And what happens when some gang in Silver acts like vampires? We supposed to just take it?”

“Monroe,” said Jack. He lay a hand flat on the table to get Thao’s attention. “He’ll handle it. If you, or anyone else, gets territorial, take it up with him. That’s it. The fuck are all the barons doing if they just watch their people kill each other?”

“Letting us settle our own problems,” started Midnight, but she stopped when Thao raised a hand.

“We’ll give it a go,” she said. “I won’t sign any five decade lease, but we’ll see how things are. If things go like you say.” She shrugged. “Maybe we’ll give this no-domain, vampires-singing-Kumbaya thing a try.”

“I’m down.” Orion raised a lank hand. “Let’s give it a trial.” He stood, his chair scraping back. The other Reapers followed his lead. “Also,” he said to Thao with a wary smile, “you guys did good, the other night. Sounded great.”

Thao narrowed her eyes, but decided to accept the compliment. “Look forward to meeting decent people.”

“Jeff’s decent,” said Crow. He clapped the man on the back and he stumbled a bit.

Jeff pawed the back of his neck as the others laughed.

Thao threw her boots on the coffee table. “This is Midnight and Lionel. Sit a while, Reapers.”

Orion exchanged a look with his boys, before slowly sitting. “Suppose if we’re going to be  _ peaceful neighbours _ , we should know each other a little.”

“Look at that, making friends,” said Jack. He clapped, pleased. When he stood, Charlie did, too, anxious to leave. “Anything you want, come here and leave a message with the captain.”

“Captain?” Thao barked a laugh. “That’s what the Red Question bastard is calling himself? Not ‘baron’?”

Orion cracked a smile.

Jack scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, don’t call him that. It’s what I do. Just, don’t mention it.”

They called for the elevator with snide whispers behind them.

“You do realise you made the whole domain call him ‘captain’ now, right?” asked Charlie.

Jack winked. “Captain’s orders.”

The elevator came and they stepped in. He hit the button for the main floor.

“Thing is,” he continued, “all the barons want their  _ sir this _ and  _ my baron that _ . What Thao said about being scared of Monroe? You knew Garcia.”

“And getting them all to make fun of him will help that?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Monroe thinks so and I figure he’s right more than he’s wrong about this sort of thing. Anyway, motorcycle.”

Charlie broke into a wide grin. She had been waiting for this ever since Jack had come by with it. He generally flew as a raven for his main mode of transport, so she rarely saw it. Damn, it looked cool. Gleaming machine of steel, covered in a hard plastic shell like an insect. Charlie ran a hand over it and it tingled.

Jack slid a leg over and the bike rumbled under him.

“No helmet?” she asked.

Jack gave her a scathing look. “If we wreck, we’re hurting the concrete. Get on.”

Charlie didn’t need any more encouragement. She swung her leg behind him and gripped tight. It felt like clinging onto a mountain. Jack took a minute to reposition her. Her hands rested on his waist, her feet braced on the foot pegs, not against the muffler. The heat felt unnatural to her cold skin. Her face planted against his back and she spit out a few stray grimy hairs.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Fuck yeah.”

Jack wasn’t as thrilling as she thought, though. They spent a good half hour cruising around residential streets and quiet back lanes until Charlie got used to the counterweight steering. Even so, it was bizarre. Air whipped from her lungs, throwing playful hands through her hair. The complete panorama of the world blitzed by. Rather than being in a car, an alien in a teleportation pod where she entered in one location and arrived in the next, the bike let her feel every degree of transition. The scent of rain in the air, the spray on the road from the tires, herby lush greenery — even if it was only on lawns. The bike and Jack rumbled under her touch, vibrating like a cybernetic beast. Her heart rattled in her silent chest.

Then, Jack brought them up the freeway ramp. The ludicrous speed stole any semblance of rational thought. All Charlie saw was beams of lights, a deafening roar and scent of oil, machine, road, and more. It consumed her. She didn’t exist. She was only part of the bike, part of this strange and wonderful new world.

When Jack finished their grand tour around the domain’s perimeter, Charlie found herself coming back to reality on a familiar part of Silver Lake. Nice houses. Not too nice. Maybe a new family neighbourhood, choked between Sunset and 101. The lawns had brown patches, even this deep into the wet season, and some paint had peeled away or driveways had some weeds sprouting from veiny cracks.

“We going anywhere special?” she called over the still-churning noise of the engine.

“Alchemists.”

Some of the excitement from the bike wore off. “Oh.”

Jack slowed the bike in front of a quaint white house, all trimmed in black. Several cars filled the driveway and street. Normal cars. A little dusty and beat up. Charlie almost forgot what they looked like. When they faked her death, she had to get rid of her own Toyota Corolla. Monroe had been quick to offer her any of his cars — or a new one, even. For some reason, the collection of secondhand cars endeared her more to the Alchemists. Even with access to Monroe’s money and generosity, they didn’t take it.

Jack hammered on the door. “FBI! Open up,” he hollered. “This is a raid.”

The chaos within was instant. Someone tripped over something heavy. At least three voices clamoured and shushed each other.

“Copper,” called Charlie. She hit Jack in the arm. “Copper, it’s just Jack being a dick. No FBI. Just, Monroe’s guys.”

The name dispelled whatever panic Jack had started.

She shook her head. “I swear, I had been about to thank you for that ride, too.”

He shrugged. “Still can.”

The front door opened a crack and a dark eye peered out. The figure sighed in relief and threw the door open. Reddish hair, freckles standing out on grey skin, and a scowl. “Goddamn, man, that wasn’t funny,” he snapped.

Jack clapped Copper on the shoulder. “Wasn’t supposed to be funny to you.”

Had anyone not thought better, the Alchemists looked like a bunch of college students, if ones with a bit too much money and time at home. The living room had every gaming system made in the last five years with a floor to ceiling bookshelf of games. A retro pinball machine  _ pinked _ in the corner. Pizza boxes made end tables.

E, a hunk of an Aussie, focused on his video game. “Told you it weren’t cops,” he said indifferently.

Julius sniffed, but he too didn’t even look up from the game. “Th-That was r-r-really — fright—fr—scary. They could think there’s some dr—dr—meth lab in here.”

“Speaking of, this ain’t a social call, is it?” asked Copper. He crossed his arms.

“Every call’s a social call,” said Charlie, but Copper knew better.

Copper led them into the three car garage. It was empty, of cars, at least. The entire room had been converted to the Alchemists’ vocation. Pressure cookers and homebrew chemistry equipment hummed and bubbled on a half dozen folding tables. A tangle of extension cables ran across the floor like snakes. The fumes were almost unbearable and they had clearly done their best to contain them with heavy padding along the garage door, but nothing could hold that stench back. Acrid, like a penny and the charge of lightning in the air, and burnt blood.

Charlie covered her nose and cursed.

Copper shrugged. “You get used to it.” He shut the door behind him. “How’s the thickblood world swinging?”

The Alchemists were all thinbloods, of Generation so high or blood so weak that they weren’t proper vampires. For reasons Charlie still didn’t get, thickbloods took to killing them off whenever they found them. Something about an apocalypse. Ashley had been abusing them to produce alchemical formulae, Disciplines in pill form, some of which no other vampire had. Monroe didn’t take kindly to it and, with Charlie’s coercion, the gang had set up shop in Silver Lake.

“It’s swinging alright,” said Jack. He raised the lid on a pot simmering away on an induction burner, then slipped it back with an unfortunate look. “I’d ask what’s cooking but — uh, I think I got it.”

Copper inspected a clipboard. “I thought our next drop wasn’t for another week. Is Monroe getting tired of keeping the product all to his lonesome?”

The last thing anyone needed was magic pills being shipped around. Telekinesis, flight, shape-shifting. It could shatter the peace before they even had one.

“I don’t think so,” said Charlie.

“Well, E’s gonna want to upcharge you, then,” he said unfortunately. “I want to keep things low-key, like you said, but shit’s getting hard to move.”

“You can talk business with Monroe,” said Jack. “That’s not why we came. He wants to know two things: are you planning on staying?”

Copper scoffed. “Of course. Shit. Anyone that still gives me safety after my last gang beat him half to torpor is in my good books. What’s the second?” His smile slowly dropped. “You guys didn’t know that.”

“A gang of thinbloods beat up Monroe?” asked Jack, looking back. “You, Aussie, the stutter and the mute?”

Copper cringed. “No, it was some thickblood gang. You know how it is. Run fast, run short, die young. They were raiders, just wanting a piece for themselves, you know? Monroe was on his own, they jumped him. He did give them a chance, they just… didn’t listen.”

Charlie hadn’t heard this. She couldn’t imagine Monroe letting himself get the shit kicked out of him. “Sure that was Monroe?”

Copper nodded. “Yeah. After the other guys were dead or gone, he gave me his business card and told me to call if I needed anything.”

That  _ did _ sound like Monroe.

“That’s the second thing,” said Jack. “Anything you need?”

Copper scratched the thin fuzz that clung to his face. “Well, we can manage to get the ingredients and equipment. Only thing that’s really lacking is vitae — you know, thickblood blood.”

“How much you want?”

Surprised, Copper led Jack over to battered fridge in the corner. Inside, it was full of plastic quart containers of blood, each labeled in a careful handwriting with weird Latin and a date. As bizarre as it all was, Charlie could almost remember the feeling of her mouth watering. Copper gave Jack a clean container and Jack let his wrist bleed — powerfully. Vampires didn’t bleed unless they willed it. The firehose spray filled the container in moments.

“Need more?” asked Jack.

Copper labeled it and set it in the fridge. “Honestly, we use, like, a tablespoon per formulae. This’ll set us up for a while. Thanks.”

“No problem. Monroe’s rules still go: feed anywhere in his domain — Silver Lake, Hollywood, Los Feliz — just keep it discreet, keep the Masquerade, don’t be an idiot, don’t kill other vamps—”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Copper with a snort. “Common sense shit.”

“Just, get along with people,” said Charlie.

“Oh, believe me,” said Copper, “we all just want to quietly and peacefully live out our eternities over here.”

Charlie smiled. Maybe there was hope for vampire society after all.  _ Society _ might be stretching things. Three hundred in all of LA, maybe thirty at most in their domain, it was more like an unruly middle school class. With fangs, and bad tempers. And Beasts. Maybe more like prison.

“Monroe’s got a number one rule, though,” said Jack. He put his jacket back on. “ _ Ask _ . When you need resources, when you got an issue with another lick, when you fuck up and crack the Masq. If you don’t ask, he can’t help you.”

“I’ll tell my guys,” said Copper. He seemed to somber. “That means a lot, you know. After Santa Monica.”

“I know,” said Jack. “And so does he.”

They left Copper and his Alchemists with a few hugs and dirty looks from E. Fair enough. After all, Monroe insisted on being their only buyer. Jack tucked away their mystery goodie bag of pills as they returned to his bike.

“What do you think they are?” he asked.

He held out four of them. The capsules held a bright cherry red fluid, exactly the colour of fresh blood. Stamped in white was strange little glyph.

“Poseidon’s trident,” said Charlie. “Something to do with water? Ocean creatures?”

Jack popped two and swallowed hard. Charlie, after a moment’s hesitation, took the other two.

Dramatically, Jack took a stance in the street and waved his hands at the puddle. To everyone’s surprise, the water lurched like a living thing. Jack leapt backwards and the dirty street water splashed down harmlessly over his boots. “Oh, man,” he groaned, shaking his wet shoes out.

Charlie burst out laughing. “Look at the water bender.”

She tried to do the same and felt the jerk in her hand, like an electric shock. Unnatural. Wrong. Her Beast loathed every moment, curling like a child in the ventricles of her heart, but it felt nothing short of magical.  _ Real _ magic. Not like giving haircuts and tattoos or brewing undead beer, but something more like  _ Harry Potter _ . 

Something that made her think something in the universe tried to balance out the horror in her life. For all that she had lost, maybe she had gained something.

The water curled into tight spheres, twirling like soap bubbles in the air. Charlie lashed out with the water, but it didn’t strike the pavement with any force. It just splashed back into the street.

Jack gave her a strange look. “You’ve been watching anime.”

“So?” she asked. She didn’t know why she was so defensive. “Lots of people watch anime.”

“Harper watches anime.”

“And?”

“You never watch it with me.”

“Got a point in there?”

“Nothing. Just, wanted you to know that I know that.”

“You’re a real ass, you know that?”

Only Jack had been told, but it wasn’t a secret she was a lesbian. Her jean jacket had a handful of buttons, one of them a rainbow, the others emojis and mementos from Europe.

Jack kickstarted the bike again and urged her on. “Come on, let’s go hit up Rubio. You can tell him all about anime.”

Manuel Rubio, for most of the last three decades, could be found in a Denny’s he commandeered and legally owned. Over some business arrangement, Rubio had agreed to let Monroe bankroll his life’s dream of opening a restaurant. Now that Garica was gone, Rubio spent all his time in the restaurant across the street from his beloved Denny’s in Los Feliz.

The nondescript block held a strip mall opposite the site. A lawyer, drycleaner, psychic, and taqueria. This late, only the fluorescent headers showed any signs of life.

A few contractor vans parked in the empty restaurant’s lot, hanging open to show their guts of ladders, tools, and wires. Plastic sheeting hung over the backdoor. Voices called from within. Spanish, irritated.

Jack knocked but let himself in through the open backdoor. “Hello,” he called. “Oy, Rubio, you got friends visiting.”

“Friends?” Distant laughter echoed. Someone pushed aside the sheets, just as concrete spit from a different room with a drill. Rubio turned around the corner. A bright white smile split his face. Unlike Copper and the thinbloods, who got to retain most of their human colouring, a strange ash tinge marred his deep tan skin. He wore work clothes and dust settled in his dark hair.

Rubio extended a hand thick with drywall dust. “Ah, Mr Shen, truly a delight, I’ve always admired your wisdom in these trying nights.” The hand came to Charlie and she took it. He held her hand and eyes. “Miss Bradley, it is a testament to your own fortitude that you have found your place in the night so young.”

The overbearing sincerity made her stammar and shuffle, but, then, Rubio returned to his natural self. His eyes blinked from the side, turning from brown to green and yellow, slitted like a snake’s. “God, though. I could use a pinch of Dominate. It’s amazing what Presence and a little blood in some workmen will get them to do, but, honestly, nothing replaces a good old Dominate. Come, let me show you her.”

Rubio led them through the backrooms. The kitchen looked half a mess. The walls were bare, but a few gleaming appliances lay covered with packing material. Rooms intended as offices or his personal haven held nothing but empty walls. At least the dining room looked mostly finished, if empty of furniture.

“This is called Churrigueresque,” said Rubio, “or, ‘ultra Baroque’. The lavishly decorated, high detail of late Spanish Baroque style. Carved stone panels, alcoves, statues. I’m calling it  _ Medusa _ .”

At once, Charlie could see why. It was like being inside a cave turned cathedral. It was utterly unlike any restaurant she had ever been in. No one could doubt the effect was stunning, especially when Rubio ran to turn on the light fixtures, which flickered an imitating candle glow over the carvings and brought them to life.

“Didn’t know you were an architect,” said Jack.

“I’ve been planning this for almost half a century. It’s amazing what time does to you.”

Charlie pointed towards a pair of sliding doors. “More dining room?”

Rubio almost skipped across. “This is something very exciting,” he said with a gleam in his eye. “This is  _ our _ dining room.”

“Like, a bar?” asked Charlie.

Rubio, as a Setite, knew the secret ways his clan had of brewing beer that might be drunk by vampires, who couldn’t digest other food or drink. Charlie could imagine that blood — no matter how good blood was — could get tiresome. Even with his clan’s shoddy rep, Rubio made a killing as the most popular and feared solo player in LA.

“Dining room,” he repeated. As he smiled, needle-like fangs poked to his lip. “I’ve been working on some new projects. Not just microbrewing anymore. Full menu. Soups, slushies—”

“Blood soup?” asked Charlie. The idea should’ve revolted her, but the idea of civilized blood drinking — eating — did do something to her. The whole ritual of restaurants and eating out, or eating in general, had been something she missed.

Rubio nodded enthusiastically.

“Blood slushies?” repeated Jack with a wild grin. “This I can get behind.”

“Absolutely. I’ve been experimenting with different vintages, what sorts of flavouring agents I can get away with — say, a few drops of stevia or vanilla extract, or even my own brews. After all, what is beer but fermentation?”

“You didn’t,” said Jack, but he still smiled.

Rubio puffed himself up. “I damn did. I made  _ pickles _ . Charcuterie—”

“Wait. Hold up there.” Charlie put up a threatening hand, but couldn’t stop smiling, even as the horror dawned on her. “What the hell’s the meat in that?”

“It’s delicious,” said Rubio.

“That’s not encouraging.”

Rubio cackled. “Oh, get off it, it’s my meat. Same as all that snake beer is my blood. I’ll have a little disclaimer at the bottom of the menu:  _ blood can only bond through the vein. _ ”

Charlie stared. Rubio didn’t seem to be missing any pieces off him. Clearly, he was giving her shit. “Where did that meat come from?”

“We can grow back,” whispered Jack. “Like, if you chop off a leg—”

“Are you serious?”

Rubio smiled.

Charlie put a hand to her stomach. She should feel sick, but, of course, her body didn’t respond. It revolted her but nothing lurched or twisted in her guts. “I’m not ordering the charcuterie,” she said faintly.

Rubio laughed, warm and hearty. Her and Jack joined in.

Rubio led them through to the kitchen, where most of the work still had to be done. Upon spotting them, four frantic workmen moved faster to get the light fixtures in. His beloved Medusa could open in the new year. Jack reassured him that he would spread the word. 

“Is there anything else we can do for you?” asked Jack.

Rubio leaned against the wall. “Monroe’s having you make the rounds?”

“Volunteered for it.”

Rubio nodded. “I’m glad Monroe won his Danse in the end. Send my respects. Silver Lake’s gonna be a good place, I can feel it. Not just a scrap of land we can all fight over, but a real community.”

“Here’s hoping.” Jack sighed. “I’m trying to spread the rules before anyone tries to test him.”

“Anything special?” Rubio snapped something to the human workmen. Charlie wondered how many hours they had been here.

“Nothing in particular.” Jack shrugged. “Nothing you should struggle with. Whole domain’s free hunting. Don’t fight or kill anyone. Masquerade. Ask for help. If you sire, don’t dump them.”

Rubio’s smile crinkled his eyes. “I’m a hundred and have kept it in my veins, so far.”

“Feel free to do it, just don’t do it lightly is all he’s saying.”

“Anarchs won’t like that,” he warned. “A Ventrue, restricting their freedoms? By God, it’s almost like a Camarilla prince!”

“Monroe’s not Anarch,” said Jack.

Rubio’s eyes said something very different to his smile and Charlie realised it, though she didn’t think Jack did. Rubio knew that, clearly. Monroe had made his un-Anarch alignment clear in the past. It had been one of the sticking points with Garcia, that Monroe insisted he was independent.

“So, is this no longer the Free State?” Rubio goaded.

“Who gives a shit about semantic politics?” asked Charlie. “You know Monroe isn’t going to fuck you.”

Rubio glanced at her. His head cocked to the side. “I like you, cousin. I think I said that when we first met.”

“You did,” she said coolly.

“I still like you.” His smile became more familiar. She couldn’t shake that the last time she had seen him, it was when he and Monroe interrogated a pair of hunters. “All of you. If not for Monroe’s funding, I wouldn’t have been able to start Medusa for another decade. When things settle down, I’d love to have you guys come around again. You’re always welcome here.”

“You’re always welcome here, too,” said Jack, clapping him on the shoulder. “In Silver Lake, I mean.”

“You’ll have no trouble from me,” promised Rubio. “I trust Monroe, at least as my overlord. More than Garcia. Come on, stay for a drink.”

Jack shook his head. “Nah, man, we got stuff to do tonight.”

Eventually, Jack managed to fend of Rubio’s pleas. First, for a drink, then a sampler of Medusa’s fair. At least a six pack for the road? Jack couldn’t turn down the beer, and they parted ways on great terms. Charlie slunk away back to the motorcycle as Jack said goodbye. 

“Any other stops before home?” she asked wearily.

“Not if you don’t want,” he said kindly. “Between the Alchemists, Reapers, Deathsingers, us, and Ashley’s brood, that should be almost all of us.” Jack settled the beers on the bike but didn’t get on. “Did hear that the Math Class split, after the Professor went missing,” he said. “Think one or two ended up here.”

Charlie struggled to keep her face steady. Her heart didn’t race. Her stomach didn’t clench. But the guilt was unshakable. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Charlie nodded and turned from him. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. She had been so stupid, so pointlessly cruel. She still couldn’t believe she had pulled the trigger. Those days after hearing Bella was trapped with Garcia — in a cage, being fed on — after weeks of trying and failing to keep her safe. Something in her broke. She didn’t like what she saw inside.

“Sorry about the Professor,” she said, meaning more than he knew.

He sighed. “Yeah. I just — I hadn’t talked to him in a while, you know? Should’ve been there, but it’s too late now. And most of Math Class could never stand each other, so, there’s that.”

Charlie wanted to reach out and steal away that haunted look in his eyes, the drawn pain, but she didn’t deserve it. She didn’t deserve the privilege of consoling her friend. Instead, she let him drive her back to Blue Moon. This time, the motorcycle ride didn’t feel nearly so cool.


	6. Swanlings

Zari missed being a mother. Really, she thought she did. For decades, she kept track of her human family, watching her husband raise their children into competent happy adults. Zari had gone to her son’s wedding, hiding on the edge of the ceremony, and been at both Noel and Aisha’s high school graduations.

Maybe she had just missed being human, though. 

Faced with that daughter, given fangs by the late Anarch Prince, Zari shoved the feelings away. There was a big difference between a mother and a sire. And she freely admitted she had no idea what went on in a new fledgling’s head.

“I  _ died _ and now you expect me to… go to clubs like some whore?” demanded Aisha.

Zari sighed and leaned against a finger. It was an old argument. Every hour, on the hour, it felt like.

“Fine. Go on. You go tell Noel and Dad that you’re a vampire and suck blood. Tell them they buried an empty casket. When does that salon close? Four, five PM? Hate me if you want, but you only do because you know I’m right. And you need to eat, something hot.”

Aisha’s anger bled into her Beast and she snarled. Zari stared impassively. She wouldn’t do anything in the middle of a crowded nightclub. Zari was fine to wear the target. She had to. Aisha would come around in a decade. The fact that she had come tonight was evidence enough that something shifted. Presence, really. Even casually hanging with Ashley’s kids was enough to feel the temptation. And so, the Discipline of emotional control lured her back among the humans. 

Pandemonium, one of the Swans’ favourite Hollywood haunts, was electric in its energy. Entering it felt like stepping through the door into another world. One populated by underaged child stars looking for adulthood, the children of boldfaced names, and the local gods of publicity, fashion, and celebrity. Many of the most physically flawless specimens of Pandemonium were favored feeding stock, and aggressive drug habits sponsored by the Sons kept them pliant and, often, forgetful of the details of strange liaisons with those who hungered for more than merely sex.

Aisha ground her fangs against the front of her teeth. In the dim blue light, they glowed.

“I will answer all of your questions,” said Zari empathetically. “Clan, history, myths. Any details you can think of. And there are certain things you need to learn, like hunting.”

“Hunting?” she repeated with equal measures disgust and disbelief. “Those are  _ people _ .” When Zari did nothing more than raise a questioning eyebrow, Aisha snarled deeper, a noise from deep in her chest. “You are a bitch.”

Zari didn’t let on how much that hurt.

“Oh, you talk to your mother with that mouth?” asked a slithering voice. “Why don’t you come with me, pretty girl? I promise, I won’t dismiss you so easily.”

Ashley could easily frighten most suburban girls, the types who had never been in a nightclub in their lives, and Aisha quickly hurried downstairs. She left the VIP lounge and disappeared down onto the dance floor — where Ashley’s childer waited. Pouty-faced Deliliah, good-hearted meathead Blake, and the bubbly and affectionate Nita. Easier to stomach by far, and valued friends for a neonate. They would intercept and teach her to hunt. After learning to lure with Presence, they would be able to chip at the persistent conscience until she fed.

“Thank you,” said Zari.

Ashley dropped himself on the couch next to her. In the blue light, he could pass as a human. It darkened his silvery hair and purple eyes, his elfin features giving the appearance of being simply pretty rather than inhuman. 

He scoffed as he took in her appearance. “The gold gown? Gorgeous. Inspired. Radiant as the sun. This?” He shook his head in disgust. “A travesty.”

As though to irk Ashley, Zari had joined her daughter in her inappropriate dress. While humans danced in sparkles and leather, she wore a chunky bottle green sweater that slunk off her narrow shoulder and holey blue jeans. Of course, the sweater was Chanel and the jeans from Citizens of Humanity, the gold rings on her ears and bracelets twenty-four carat. As much as Zari liked to play the part of disaffected Anarch, she liked shopping with Monroe’s credit card even more.

“You always told me to treat Pandemonium as my own living room.”

“Yes, but not quite so literally, love.” Ashley scanned the VIP deck. “Let’s take your own advice. Find someone nice.” She felt the Presence cast like a fishing line and some gorgeous young man came wandering in half a daze from the bar.

He blinked, perhaps drunk, perhaps worse. “Uh.” He licked his lips, pink tongue darting out. “I’m Luke. How’re — Who’re—”

“Perfect,” said Ashley with a cruel smile.

Luke collapsed on the couch on Zari’s other side, as though jerked by an invisible rope. With a sigh at Ashley’s coarse theatrics, Zari reached her own powers out to soothe his frazzled concerns. She recognised him as a regular, a son of some rich movie producer, and one of Ashley’s best customers. Zari threaded her fingers through his rich dark hair. His mouth split into a grin and he rested his head on her shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said to Ashley, forcing her voice calm, “but I already ate.”

He shrugged, nonplussed. “Have it your way. You didn’t come here for fun, tonight.”

Zari kept her attention on Luke. “I knew I had a good chance to find you and your childer here.”

“Business?” he asked in a very different tone.

“Consulting. I’m not asking you to tell me what to do, but I would value your advice.”

“I always have time for you, childe,” he said brightly.

Zari cringed inwardly. A nugget of truth sat at the center of it, wrapped in layers and layers of selfishness and abject cruelty. Not to her. Never to her. In that, at least, he had been right. Since she had agreed to let him have another chance, he had fallen back to the Ashley she had once known. Persistently cheerful, determinedly helpful, a live wire of vampiric debauchery. She hated how much she loved it.

“What interest would the Camarilla hold in  _ The Fifth Estate _ ?” she asked, her voice pinched thin.

“Ah.” Ashley smiled but there was no humour in it. “You think the Tower might want to take you out for writing a few articles.”

“Will they?”

“Doubtful. Cam domains tend to have their own avenues of culture — zines, included, alongside art, poetry, even plays and novels.” He shifted, running a hand through his hair as he thought. “Though, you should keep in mind that anything we print, you should expect to end up in their hands.”

Zari thought of the interviews she conducted, the business advertising, lost and found pages, pages of art and photography. It was only a matter of time before someone gave her a political cartoon of Bartholomew Vaughn.

“Anything that could get a target on my back?” she asked. 

“I don’t know,” said Ashley. The words clawed their way out regretfully. “I don’t know Vaughn. Never met the guy. We’ll have to wait and see. Any hot ideas for a scheme?”

Zari slid her eyes and smile sideways. “Gambling.”

Ashley had dismissed it before she could get another word out.

“No, you listen to me,” she snapped. “A private gambling ring. Get your favourite useless vessels — trust fund brats, C-list actors, washed up musicians — and then move into the hills. Their rich daddies, A-listers, current hits. And we rig the games. In every game, one or two of the players is ours. We take a cut of the pot  _ and _ their winnings.”

“Hmm,” said Ashley appreciatively. “ _ We _ . I like that. Like the game idea, too. I’ve never been involved in gambling before, that’ll be fun. It won’t pull in what the ring used to—”

“It’ll just be different,” she said. Zari swallowed her conscience. Appealing to the horror of it would bounce right off him. “The ring brought in steady, but low income. The games will be bursts of profit, six, seven figures, but lays of nothing in between.”

“Think bigger,” he encouraged. “If you think about running one game a month, you’ll never keep something like the Sons. They need consistent revenue, or a tremendous amount of fear. Fear is cheap, but tiring on that scale.”

Zari stared at him and felt an unsettling cold finger trace down her spine. Maybe not with everything, but he wanted to pick up where he left off. Rearing her. Teaching her. A flicker of suffocating conscience rebelled at the idea, but the rest of her held its silence. It shouldn’t have been. 

She raised her hand from Luke to lean on her arm, gazing at a blank of wall. Luke began to drool gently, lost to the world in the powerful feeling.

“What?” asked Ashley, too sharply. “A ‘thank you’ would be nice of you.”

Zari glared. “Don’t you snap at me like that, Ash. You’re lucky I haven’t let Charlie tear you limb from limb.”

Ashley amused himself with the idea. “Oh, that poor moonchilde. Part of me still wants to take her in.”

“Monroe would have your hide.”

He sighed dramatically, his breath wintery and stale. “Would he, now? She’s so… granola. So plain and vanilla. I would love to break her.”

“Don’t you lay a hand on her,” she warned.

His words sent an undue chill up Zari’s spine. She had watched him rear Delilah and it brought her uncomfortable questions. After all, Delilah was far happier now as a bloodthirsty succubus than she ever had been as a nerdy marine bio student. Delilah even knew most of it was due to Ashley’s influence. 

Zari gave Luke an unfortunate look and pushed him to his feet, with a hand and her own powers. He toddled away, confused, but himself again.

“Monroe would destroy you for it,” she said. “And I would vacuum up your ashes.”

“Monroe loves me,” he said with a menacing smile.

“He trusts you — only because he doesn’t know you.”

For a moment, Zari felt Ashley about to start his theatrics.  _ Oh, you wound me. I never!  _ But then he appraised her with something nearer to respect.

“You’re much smarter than he gives you credit for,” he said instead.

Zari’s phone buzzed with a text message. Delilah had sent her a photo. Her, red haired and lustrous in green, dancing with a beaming Aisha as they shared some Luke.

Ashley’s phone chimed and she knew he had gotten the same image.

“Be kind to her,” she asked of him.

Ashley fell quiet, his fancies of corruption leaving him, for the moment. “Do you want me to be kind to her or to do right by her? Those are two very different things.”

“Be kind,” she reiterated. “She can find her own way.”

Ashley’s eyes were dark when they turned back to her. “She won’t be happy. Not for years, maybe many, many years.”

“Happiness isn’t everything.”

“So says someone who has never lost it.”

Zari glowered, hurt. “How dare you say that to me?” she whispered. “I lost… my family, my career, my  _ children _ .”

Ashley put a hand on her bare shoulder, cool and heavy. “We all have. I know how neonates think, that ancillae just spring out of the earth, fully fanged, but we all have our tragedies. We all died. It’s not right to let Aisha be so miserable, in a way you never have been.”

Zari bristled at the accusation. “She looked damn happy in that picture.”

“And in the morning?” he asked. “Maybe she’ll kill that man. Maybe she’ll drink the blow out of him, or worse. And the happiness will fade like a hangover. Even  _ you _ aren’t happy, my darling.”

He didn’t use Presence on her. He knew how she loathed it and refused to entertain his wiles. But something far worse clung to his voice: sincerity, a desire to help her. Zari remained the one aspect under his influence who had rejected him before he had finished with her. For it, he respected her, maybe loved her as far as Ashley was capable of honest emotions.

And he wasn’t wrong.

“Ash,” she said softly, “I’m fine the way I am. And I would ask that you don’t pester my girl. Just, keep an eye on her, if she’s making friends with your kids.”

His thumb stroked her shoulder, brushing her bra strap. “I promise.”

It wasn’t him admitting he was wrong. Hell would freeze over first. But it was close enough. To him, Aisha was just a fledgling, no one important, and he gained nothing with the promise. Nothing but Zari’s smile, which she gave freely. He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers.

“Even if you aren’t hungry, I am,” he said. “Care to join me?”

Zari didn’t mean to lean into his touch. “I can’t,” she said. “I have work.”

She stood and he stared at her like she had kicked his puppy.

“What? And you’re going to leave me all alone?” he whined.

“You’re babysitting,” she teased. She drew a hand across his hair and his face spun with the touch. “And I have an appointment with Jeanette.”

Ashley groaned. “At least let me give you Nita.”

Zari let him do that much. She quite liked Nita, pocket-sized cheerful squirrel that she was. Her voluminous coarse hair pulled into a bouncing ponytail and she dressed like a seventies Go-Go dancer. Every strange look she attracted turned into a gleeful smile.

The two of them crawled into Zari’s silver Mercedes. Nita twiddled with the music most of the way, humming with a quiet smile on her face. Like all of Ashley’s kids, she radiated a bone-deep bliss, the sort that came from enjoying unlife without a conscience. Nita didn’t have the same bloodthirsty hedonism of Delilah or Blake’s aggressive friendliness, but rather a sweet air-headedness that endeared her to everyone.

Eventually, Nita thought to ask where they were heading. Ash just told her to go and his word was law; life was good on Ashley’s side.

“Jeanette Voerman,” said Zari. “I’m meeting her at Asylum, in Westside.”

Nita’s hot pink lips contrasted with her brown skin as she smacked them nervously. “Isn’t Angels still, like, a wasteland?”

“Yep. Going the scenic route.”

A very, very long route. Even across the freeways, she didn’t feel confident about their safety. Instead, she peeled off main roads and drove along the base of the Hollywood hills — Ashley’s domain. While loathed by most of the Anarchs, he had enough of a rep and low enough of a lick population to keep it quiet. The hills dropped them off at the north end of the Voermans’ domain and Zari pulled them into a reserved parking spot at Asylum. Most reserved spots at vamp operations were specifically reserved for their kind.

Zari retrieved a vintage black Chanel from the backseat. The leather shoulder bag had been a gift from Ashley upon her sire’s death. Their relationship hadn’t been any friendlier then, but Zari had first entered it with more optimism. 

“Wow, place is popping,” said Nita with a small giggle.

Asylum’s back end was full of spider motifs — webs, insects, and more than one wrapped up morsel. Creepy and freaky, it mixed with the haunting industrial thump that bled out into the street. Nita was right. A huge alternative crowd formed around the front doors, barely constrained by the velvet rope, even though the sky drizzled a cold grey rain over them.

Zari beckoned Nita to come close. They knocked their heads together and Zari turned on her camera.

She blew a kiss to the little red dot. “Hey, roses!” she crowed. “Me and my best girl, Nita, are out here in Santa Monica. Don’t forget about Asylum! A dark and spooky club is just  _ perfect _ on a night like this.”

“Ooh, is this your social?” Nita grinned. “Hey! Hey, MySpace, how you doing?”

“Love you lots.” She blew another kiss. “Let’s go take a look inside.”

Zari posted the short video to her MySpace. It took several minutes and she took the opportunity to take some more pictures. She trusted business with the Voermans, but this wasn’t her domain. If the worst should happen, they now had a trail. Her followers tracked her feed for the aesthetic photos that portrayed the celluloid perfection of LA, but she knew Monroe kept an eye on it for practical purposes.

Zari set the camera to her eye and zoomed at the corner of the building, to get an angle shot of the front, staring the lilac and crimson neon header.  **_AsYLuM_ ** . The rain bloomed the neon with streaks of light.

Nita splayed her hands wide for the rain and turned her face to it. Cool, but not as icy for humans, she enjoyed the wet spray across her mostly bare body. Zari took her by the hand and couldn’t help but laugh with her as they pushed their way through the crowd.

A muscled bouncer put up a hand.

“I’ve got a meeting with the promoter,” said Zari. “Jeanette Voerman.”

“Clear off, ladies,” he said gruffly. “Back of the line.”

Not for the first time, Zari wished for Monroe — at least, for a Dominate in a back pocket sometimes. Her smile became distinctly less friendly and a Presence of fear bled out.

His eyes and voice became less certain. “I told you girls, back off.”

“I think you should go check with Ms Voerman,” said Zari coolly. “I’m not going to ask you again.”

The bouncer stood against the fear as long as he could, but he was only human. He turned away, trembling, and checked a chart by the door. He paled.

“I’m — On behalf of Ms Voerman and Ms Voerman, I’m so sorry, Miss Ada — Miss Abedeme.”

“Adeyemi,” she corrected with steel. He hadn’t even tried. “Zareen Adeyemi.”

The bouncer cowed and reached across to unhook the velvet rope. “Of course, I’m sorry, Miss Adeyemi. Ms Voerman is upstairs in her office.”

Asylum opened to them, a post-industrial Gothic spiderweb of exposed pipes and red fleur-de-lis wallpaper. No DJ spun the tunes. Music pumped around with a high-tech sound system and the main floor was covered with bodies. This was a different sort of culture from Pandemonium. Close-knit, niche, and significantly less wealthy, but because of the Voermans — and after Jeremy MacNeil’s Taste of LA, the Professor’s Open Mic, and now Garcia’s Greystone had closed — it was now one of the only spots in the city that common licks could go for free feeding. Even Nines didn’t let anyone feed in his Last Round. Zari didn’t spy any other vamps, though. Asylum had been curiously quiet lately on the undead front.

“I love Asylum,” Nita gushed. She held onto Zari’s arm with both hands. “Oh, God. Like, the  _ music _ — it’s so craggly, like, techno’s ugly child it got in the divorce.”

Zari called for the old-fashioned cage elevator. The steel was surely rusted for the gritty aesthetic. “Why don’t you go have fun?” she asked. “I’ll just be chatting with Jeanette for a while.”

Nita bit her lip. “You sure? Ash was worried about you.”

Zari threw her head back and laughed. “Honey, I don’t think Ashley’s been worried about anyone other than himself since his death. Besides, I’m not in any danger here. Just business.”

Nita gave her another unsure look but, as the elevator dinged and opened, she folded into the wild crowd of dancers and let Zari ascend herself. Zari flicked through her bag, checking the inventory.

The music dimmed to a dull vibration under her boots as she crossed the hallway and knocked on the heavy door. A brass nameplate marked it as the office of Therese Voerman, Westside’s baron and the owner of Asylum, but every lick knew the sisters kept haven in the room.

The door pulled open and, if Nita could be called blissful, Jeanette Voerman was the very picture of manic glee. Pale as her platinum blonde hair, it pulled into a pair of mismatched pigtails, and she wore a face of thick mascara and red lipstick. Heavy motorcycle boots and riding gloves mismatched with a tiny skirt and an open dress shirt that almost fell longer.

“Oh my god, Zari!” she cried, and embraced her in a tight swinging hug.

Jeanette spun her in circles, making a shrill  _ wee _ sound all the while, until she dropped Zari in her room and kicked the door shut.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for ages, girl,” said Zari, not even bothering to hide her excitement. The Voerman twins were Malkavian legends among the Anarchs.

Jeanette ran a red nail down Zari’s face. A shiver ran down her spine as she looked at her like a sack of blood.

Jeanette laughed and broke the tension. “I’m so happy we have something to talk about —  _ finally _ . Come on, sit, sit, sit!”

Zari sat. The high-ceiled red room held the standard office equipment, including a new computer and a professional-looking seating area, but also a humongous heart-shaped bed. Clearly, the two sisters shared the haven.

Jeanette hurled herself into the bed, her skirt flipping around her grey skin with abandon. Pillows jumped with the landing. Zari took out her notepad and, at least attempted, to be professional.

Jeanette looked up at her and Zari rose an eyebrow at the deep cleavage. The tight white shirt did little to contain the red push up bra.

“Bet that works on all the boys,” she said.

“Most of the girls, too,” said Jeanette in a husky voice. She rolled over again and perched her head on her hands, her eyes clear grey and unblinking. With her skin so pale, she looked like a porcelain doll, every motion too jerky, too sudden. Then, she giggled, and the creepiness faded for the moment.

“I’m here to write about your clubs,” said Zari. She took out a voice recorder and Jeanette nodded. She turned it on. “Club with an S.”

Jeanette’s tongue darted out to lick her lips. “Oh, those clubs. My sweet little spiders on the wall. Asylum has done ever-so-well that Therese thought I’d been a good little girl and gave me an allowance. Big girl allowance, now, to open up a new lemonade stand in Hollywood.”

Zari realised she had chosen right by the voice recorder. Most interviews, she could keep up their words on paper, at least the essence, but she never would’ve slogged through that Malk bullshit.

“Does it got a name yet?”

“Asylum 2: Electric Boogaloo.” Jeanette howled with laughter. Zari chuckled politely, wondering if this was a Malkavian reference, and then Jeanette fell silent. “But, seriously. You know, the Lemonade Stand.”

“The… Lemonade Stand?” asked Zari again.

“You know, the Lemonade Stand, that lives on Drury Lane.” Jeanette’s hands splayed in the open sky. “I’m thinking, the rotted turmoil of sweet citrus gone to white fuzzies, the rusted nails hammered into creaking wood, the gripping torment of natural decay whilst we alone stand in the rapture of unending Biblical blood curse, ten cents a beer and twenty a pint.”

“I think Therese’s gonna have some say in that pricing,” said Zari.

Jeanette rolled her eyes and groaned like a teenage girl. “ _ God _ . Therese this, Therese that. What about what Jeanette wants to do? Therese  _ is _ only three minutes older and, one-twenty-five years later, she still has to make sure that  _ everyone knows _ she’s older. No one says it’s only three minutes.”

“Where are you opening the new club, then?”

“I made some hot new friends with this swanky Toreador over in Hollywood,” said Jeanette. “Real silver fox who promised he’d bankrupt Lure for me.” She cocked her head. “Aren’t you one of his little goslings? What’re swan babies called?” She cocked her head to the other side, as though listening to something. “Right, thank you. Cygnets. But that’s a stupid name, so you’re swanlings.”

“I ain’t his swanling,” said Zari irritably. That Ashley was financing this wasn’t something she’d known. He must’ve gotten over his plot to kill the Voerman sisters and take over Westside from them, since Monroe basically let him have the run on Hollywood.

“You alright, swanling?” asked Jeanette, concerned. “Something wrong I can make right?”

“Maybe, actually. Your bouncer, this Lego-man-looking motherfucker, wasn’t so nice to me when I came in. Tried to turn me away.”

Jeanette spun in a cyclone of grey legs and flapping skirt. “ _ What _ ? And I gave my blood to him? He must be one of Therese’s. Bitches make bitches.” She lunged for a phone and her fingers flew across it before tossing the device across the bed. “Done. Settled. Bye bye, Daddy-O.”

Touched and slightly disturbed, Zari said, “Let’s get back to your new club. Seeing Asylum, I’m sure it’s going to be a roaring new success. Any plans for special features we can expect?”

“Well, I found DJ Glamour-Glo, totally our kind of chick,” said Jeanette conspiratorially. “I got a Brujah butt-buddy to ghoul her and, man, Celerity in a DJ is wicked fast. Techo but hot off the griddle, stacked to order, Mozart and Wayne Gretzy of the turntable.”

Zari jotted down the name to check out, but Jeanette dreamed on, half-oblivious to Zari.

“And there’s gonna be a swimming pool on the roof. Really super hot water, to make your heart think we’re still kicking. And skinny boy snake-mage has promised to make a good deal for a taproom for the Stand. Maybe even brewed strawberry lemonade, bubbly and bloody. It’ll be a place to let your hair down on the roof, you know, bang bang and  _ bang bang _ . It’s gonna be so rad, like, radioactive. Like a fistful of uranium lighting up the night sky… in the shape of a lemon.”

“Mind if I get a picture of you and take a few around the club for the article?” asked Zari wearily. Listening to Jeanette gave her a headache and she wondered if Charlie would be like this in a hundred years. She hoped not. She still wanted to be able to tolerate the girl in a century.

Jeanette rolled back over onto her hands, her legs kicking back behind her. Zari snapped a few from different angles.

“Oh, gee, there we are! Hello, Themis.” Jeanette waved at someone behind her.

Zari turned and could only stare. She knew the woman well, but her name wasn’t Themis. It was Hawthorne. The Embrace had left her blind and Zari tried to not breathe, hoping Hawthorne wouldn’t notice her. She dressed in all black, like the high-paid personal assistant she had once been, and her stern features were carved in stone. A woman stood behind her, prim and tucked. She dragged a barely conscious man behind her and Zari realised it was the bouncer. 

“Where would you like him, Ms Voerman?” asked Hawthorne brusquely.

“Oh, anywhere,” said Jeanette. “Eat him if you want. I don’t wanna see him — and don’t tell my sister. Find a replacement, blood him, yadda yadda. You know. Actually, wine cellar.”

Hawthorne’s stony face tightened. “Yes, Ms Voerman.”

She shut the door behind her and Zari stared at Jeanette. Hawthorne had left Monroe. Everyone knew that. It made cute gossip, the big bad Ventrue losing his grip on a slave.

“It’s so hard to find good help, isn’t it?” asked Jeanette in a sour-sweet voice. “Sometimes it just… falls into your lap.”

Zari struggled to pull her mind back to the task at hand. She struggled through a few more questions before packing away the recorder and bidding Jeanette a hasty farewell.

She hammered the call button for the elevator. It couldn’t move fast enough.

She should go looking for Hawthorne. Zari had made an intro article for every permanent resident in LA for the last ten years. She also could argue she owed it to Monroe who, while he tried to hide it, missed his ex-ghoul terribly.

Then again, who knew what sort of deal Hawthorne had made with the Voerman sisters? Clearly, she didn’t want to be coming back to Silver Lake. And she was Ventrue. She could be as crafty and unpredictable as Monroe. Maybe it was best for everyone if she stayed away.

Zari bit her tongue and forced a smile as she pulled Nita away from some man who wore more eyeliner than Jeanette did. Nita pouted, but quickly found joy in the sparkling of chill rain outside, and in the smooth interior of the car, and in the bass of the music, and the pretty houses in the hills. For the swanlings, there was always more joy.

Zari should’ve probably asked Nita about Ashley’s dealings with the Voerman sisters and this Lemonade Stand, but her mind was too cluttered, too far away. She dropped the swanling off at one of Ashley’s modern mansions in the Glen — and realised Jeanette Voerman lived in her head, rent-free. Swanlings. She snorted.

Zari sped home fast, too fast. She wasn’t one for keeping secrets. Straight shooting, always. It was one of the major things that Ashley and her had disagreed on. She slammed the door of her car and took the camera and notes upstairs. Normally, she worked in Blue Moon’s basement, all the better for company to chase away the ghosts that found her in solitude, but she didn’t want to look at Monroe’s face.

She could still see Hawthorne’s. Like carved in stone, unyielding, merciless, more vampire than any fledgling Zari had ever seen. Then again, with two and a half centuries, Hawthorne would be older than anyone else in LA. But, with the Camarilla in town, they could expect vampires who knew Julius Caesar and Jesus fucking Christ to come around. And, as Monroe and Ashley liked to warn, the older the vampire, the more powerful.

Zari’s phone chimed again. Aisha, drunk as a skunk, had texted her.  _ Best night eva111 _

Zari turned her phone off and tried to not think of the path she had led her daughter down. She knew where it ended, even if Ashley promised to be nice.

She had another, far more important meeting with a Malkavian tonight. She needed to pull herself together. Quickly, she locked the doors again and returned to her car. The streets yielded to her and she arrived at Blue Moon all too soon. Monroe’s office was blissfully empty. What the hell would she even tell him? 

Zari knocked on Charlie’s door. 

_ Hey, Matt, so, bad news, your ancient ghoul, the one you were clearly in love with and turned  _ and  _ made blind, is apparently working for the Voermans doing muscle work with some starched ghoul. I know, crazy, huh? _

The door opened. Charlie crossed her arms and leaned against the doorframe, wearing only a tank top and basketball shorts. 

“Don’t you look at me like that,” muttered Charlie. “I’m down to head out, but I get enough pity.”

“Grab a coat,” said Zari. “It’s still wet out.”

Grumbling, Charlie did as she said, that shapeless denim jacket pinned with patches of evergreens and buttons. Zari wondered wearily what people thought of this weird pair. Her in a cashmere sweater and a Chanel trench coat and this club rat’s skinny ankles poking out of basketball shorts and into sneakers and mismatched socks.

Even so, Zari took them the Grove, a colossal shopping center on the edge of Hollywood. Not so much a shopping center as a beau-arts playground, a nest of streets filled with big names and an eager variety of shoppers.

As they walked the streets, Charlie’s eyes glued to the store fronts. “That’s a good sushi place,” she said in a strangled voice.

Zari linked arms with her. “Are you hungry?”

Charlie wrinkled her nose at the question but shook her head.

“Then, come on. You still only have, like, five clothes at Blue Moon. I won’t even complain about what you pick.”

Charlie raised an eyebrow and took that as a challenge. “Oh yeah?”

Zari prepared herself to regret the words. “Just nothing too… strange.”

The girl had been through enough hardship of late. She deserved a night of entertainment. Charlie took immediate advantage of the mischievous path Zari laid out. Charlie didn’t drag them through Coach, or J Crew, or to the triple-floor Sephora. Instead, she seemed to develop a completely new magical talent. Even in the Gap, Charlie managed to find the strangest, most bizarre pieces. Accordingly, Zari groaned, ostentatiously rolled her eyes, and complained. Never too much. Enough to make Charlie smirk and laugh and then buy it.

A t-shirt featuring dogs playing poker. Hideous Hawaiian floral button-downs. An infinity scarf that could be pulled up as a hood — with furry bear ears.

Seeing her own need, Charlie did manage to pick up a pack —  _ a pack _ — of black t-shirts, one of socks, and another pair of jeans. At each basic, Zari determinedly put it back.

“What’s the point in getting something cheap to wear everyday, when you could get a nicer investment piece that’ll feel better?” she would ask each time.

Charlie shrugged. “I mean, we’re immortal. How long do ‘investment pieces’ really last?” 

With the air quotes and everything. Zari rolled her eyes. “I still have most of my basics from when I was first turned.”

Charlie slowly relented, though it wasn’t easy when she spotted the price tags.

“Who the fuck pays this much for jeans?” she demanded in Citizens of Humanity.

Zari threw her a few more pairs to go try on. “We do. Now, scat.”

From the other side of the dressing room door, Charlie continued, edging closer and closer to breaking the Masquerade, though Zari figured no one cared too much.

“Fangs come with black diamond uber luxe credit cards?” she called.

“Are you really gonna take issue with Monroe’s money?” Zari laughed. “Come on, he’s about as above board we get. He runs a legit, tax-paying business and has most of it in investments.”

“Uh-huh,” said Charlie, unconvinced. A pair slapped over the dressing room door. “Definitely not. And what about Ashley, then?”

Zari didn’t know what their issue was, but she didn’t like being put in the middle of it. She bristled. “Someone’s gotta run drugs for the Hollywood elite. It’s not like he’s on some skeevy street corner giving crack to kids.”

“No, someone  _ don’t _ gotta,” snapped Charlie.

Briefly, Zari wondered if all humans and new fledglings were like this these days. “It’s not easy for us, you know? Most just steal, Dominate or Presence, our way into what we need. There’s not a lot of night-only jobs. Plus, one night, people are gonna notice you don’t age.”

Charlie opened the door, pulling her tank top back over her head. “Yeah, but.” She shrugged the weight of her words. “I’m allowed not to like it.”

“Of course,” she said, taking the armful of jeans back. “And you’re allowed to find sense one night. Which ones?”

Charlie wrinkled her nose. “Libby’s. You were right.”

They also happened to be the only three-hundred-dollar pair. A wash paler than her jean jacket, torn at the knee, but reinforced to not rip further. Super thick denim, high-rise, and baggy bootcut. Exactly Charlie’s type.

Satisfied, Zari checked them out and returned them to the car to off-load Charlie’s fleshed out wardrobe. Zari loved the look of a trunk full of shopping bags. Then, it was back out to the Grove, to Charlie’s persistent complaints.

“I don’t need anything,” she whined.

“Look,” said Zari pointedly, “I know what those rooms upstairs look like. You got about two hundred square feet of  _ you _ space and came to Blue Moon with next to nothing. At least, you’re gonna get a lamp.”

“I don’t  _ need _ anything.”

“Consider it a Christmas present,” said Zari with a smile.

That shut her up. Charlie gnawed on her lip.

“I hate Christmas,” she said at last.

“I know, girl, me too.” Zari took Charlie’s hand and led her back into Nordstrom. “So, what sort of lamp do you want?”

Charlie didn’t want a lamp. Her room had enough light. The pressure of walking around the store with an empty shopping cart finally got to her, and she started noticing things. Things she had left behind in her house when they had faked her death. A skinny laptop,  _ and then _ a desk to use it,  _ and then _ a chair to sit on. CD player and albums. Hiking boots and outdoorsy gear. Then, Charlie had spotted a picture frame with a default photo in it: dogs surfing. And she simply had to have it.

Charlie walked away from the register, astounded when the total figure came up, but Zari swiped the credit card mutely. Never had Monroe given her grief before and she had rung up higher totals than this before. Not many, but she had.

At the end of their night, Zari told her she could take any of the plants from the basement and hang it in her room. The mandrake plants smelled beautiful — complex, floral, bloody — and they were all Zari’s work anyways.

It took them four trips back and forth to get everything upstairs in Charlie’s room. In the end, she did get a new lamp. A lava lamp.

Charlie tore into the box like a kid on Christmas morning, sitting in the piles of paper shopping bags emblazoned with store logos. “Gotta see if this looks as cool as it did in the store,” she said by way of explanation.

Zari made a note to get the girl a ghoul to build that furniture. If that wasn’t a good use of ghouls, she didn’t know what was. The thought pulled her back to Hawthorne, that prim and proper woman who followed her, the way she used to follow Monroe. Practiced in shutting out thoughts, Zari pushed it away. Harder. 

Zari sat on the bed, watching fondly as Charlie carefully assembled the lava lamp. When she plugged it in, the gloop at the bottom didn’t move. She tapped the glass with a nail, disappointed.

“It’s gotta heat up first,” said Zari.

Grumbling, Charlie unpacked her new clothes, tearing off stickers and cutting tags free. “Thanks,” she managed. “For tonight. It was actually a lot of fun. Apprecesh.”

“You’re welcome,” she said warmly. “Figured you could use a nice night out.” Zari picked up a VHS and frowned at it, not understanding what the series was for a minute. It was one of Harper’s shows. She was starting to find more of them downstairs. “How’s Jesse Harper?”

“Fine,” said Charlie, too quickly. “I mean. She’s cool, you know. Adjusting. Cool… Coolly.”

“I know you’re living above a nightclub, but fold your clothes nice, would you?” snapped Zari.

Charlie started but, embarrassed, pulled the clothes out of her dresser again and folded them neatly. “Sorry,” she muttered.

“You were saying about Harper?”

“Something you wanna know?” asked Charlie, irritated.

“None of us know her well,” she said reasonably. “All we know is that she used to hunt vampires — and  _ we _ are vampires. I’m worried about you getting a lot worse than a broken heart.”

Charlie bit her pale lip so hard it began to flush. “There’s nothing,” she assured her. “We’re just friends.”

In Zari’s experience,  _ nothing _ could mean a great many things but it rarely ever actually meant  _ nothing _ . Maybe unrequited, maybe in its early stages, but something. Zari wished she could introduce Charlie and Nita — without Ashley hanging over them. Maybe Velvet. If the fledgling wanted a romantic companion in a woman, there were far better choices.

“You saw your sire’s been hanging around the basement?” asked Zari.

Charlie hip-checked a dresser drawer shut and crumpled up the bags. “Yep. Doing my best to ignore it,” she said. “You know, be the bigger vampire? We’re all in the same boat and he’s not my enemy. At least, not immediately.”

Zari blinked. “Well, that’s awfully mature of you, Charlie. Just keep your head on a swivel. Established Malkavians can be tricky, sometimes.”

Charlie glared at her. “Oh, yeah? Like Lasombra? Why don’t you get your nose out of my stuff?”

She laughed and held up her hands. “Alright, alright. I got you. Harmless nerd fun. Friends and anime with a shadowbitch. What could possibly go wrong?”

Charlie didn’t like that either and Zari excused herself before she said something she would regret. Charlie was so young. Zari remembered what that felt like. Young, as both a human, inexperienced in the world and people and love. But also young as a lick, getting a grasp on feeding and Disciplines for the first time and thinking they got it figured out for eternity. Just like Aisha, even with her decade on Charlie.

And, of course, being young, they had no idea how young they were and insisted on being treated as adults.


	7. Haunted LA

Jack didn’t want to know if Ryu went to Monroe to get his blood. What agreement they had made. It would only start another argument and he didn’t have that in him. When he made his reluctant way back to the theatre, Ryuko had evidently been waiting for him. The circle had been cast and only the last few sigils needed to be touched in place. Ryuko tossed aside his book and, without even greeting Jack, fixed them with blood from a vial at his neck and beckoned sharply for Jack to step in.

“You wanna hear my apology?” he asked weakly.

Ryuko sighed and glared.

That was that, then. Forgiven.

Jack shifted from foot to foot, head hung low.

The circle crackled and with a clap of thunder and agonizing pain, the whirlwind stopped. The excitement of a new time never got old.

“So, where’re we going?” asked Jack.

It didn’t escape his notice that Ryu had dressed up, or as dressed up as Ryu ever got. Holey jeans, a t-shirt without a graphic, and shoes that were not Crocs. He even might’ve combed his hair.

Ryuko’s glare softened. “Finishing that date. What does it look like?”

Mute and accepting, Jack followed him out of the rundown theatre and out into the street. Late afternoon sunlight, like Ryu knew Jack loved, and a glance at the people marked them somewhere in the fifties. Maybe sixties. A crowd of greasers hung at the boulevard, vintage cars crawling through close-knit groups of young women. Ryuko and Jack were ghosts as they passed them, imprints and projections of another time’s plasm unable to be perceived. It was more like living in a movie than time travel, but Jack didn’t complain. Warm sunlight on his skin, the Beast and its hunger purged from his chest, and Ryuko at his side. He didn’t need much.

Ryuko stole a bike —  _ technically not stealing, but forcing a plasmic reconstruction by traxic will and…  _ — but Jack never got the hang of that sort of interaction with times. Moments later, an overlarge black cougar padded alongside Ryuko. The sun heated his dark fur and he purred.

Griffith Park loomed, brighter and more cheerful than it ever was at night. Four thousand acres of partially tamed wilderness. Campers, picnickers, families, couples. Jack and Ryuko had cleansed more than one ghost from the Old Zoo, but they weren’t here on business now. Ryuko had taken them to a perfectly warm afternoon in fall. Many of the trees had loose or falling leaves, leaving a crunchy carpet under his paws.

Ryuko discarded the bike and took them up Jack’s favourite hiking trail. The rocks were little obstacle for Jack, who had four legs, claws, and padded paws to navigate. Ryuko bent more than one law of physics, but made his way like a ghost, cheating and gliding where he wanted. Even now, though, he was far too serious.

Jack slipped up a towering tree ahead and crawled out to a weaker branch.

“You be careful up there,” sad Ryuko gruffly, like he couldn’t care less.

He smiled and reached a paw to shake the branch. Soft leaves in yellows, browns, and oranges fluttered like confetti.

Ryuko’s glare softened and he peered up at Jack through his eyelashes, struggling not to smile.

The hike ended only a hundred yards further up, to a clearing that overlooked most of LA. The setting sun turned the sky orange, gleaming off the buildings. With the first fall rains, the hills had come back to a verdant green.

Panting, Ryuko dropped himself on a grassy spot. Jack curled up next to him and lay his great head on his lap. Ryuko’s hand slipped onto his head, gently stroking. He purred a deep low vibration.

The sun continued to set, disappearing over the ocean in the far distance. Pinks and purples joined the sunset as the sky deeped to blue and darkened further. Millions of stars, muted by the light pollution, glimmered. It had been a long time since they had stayed long enough to see a sunset. Jack nuzzled Ryu’s leg in thanks.

“Could you turn?” asked Ryuko softly.

Confused, Jack did. He stretched out, shoulders and legs rearranging themselves, and he sat up next to Ryuko. Only then did he notice the look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

Ryuko bobbed his head. The words, so unlike him, must’ve dug like razors in his throat. “You’ve been going through shit, apparently, and I’ve been too much of a stubborn ass to be there for you. You’re right. Now’s not a great time for me to join a magical community,” he said quietly. “Especially since you lost the Professor.”

Ryuko barely knew about the Professor. Maybe half-remembered stories decades ago, but Jack was good about compartmentalizing his life. 

“Monroe told you,” said Jack with regret.

“So what if he did? Are you jealous?”

“No.” He shrugged. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

Ryuko crawled to his feet, groaning. “Come on. Got something else to show you.”

Before Jack could make a half-hearted attempt to stop him, Ryuko hurled himself off the overlook. Nothing but spirits could damage plasmic imprints, but Jack’s heart still lurched as Ryuko screamed bloody murder, and the sound of him rolling down the hill, smacking into trees.

Jack took wings to the bottom, coming across a Ryu with a grimace of pain.

“You gonna pick my eyes out, birdbrain?” he grunted, crawling back to his feet.

Ryuko wasn’t the young mage he once was, though, and something hurt. Probably many somethings, but he was too proud to show it. He bit into his talisman, the one he kept charged for pain relief in lieu of having to steal pills, and chewed it aggressively.

Jack returned to two legs and offered a hand, but Ryuko waved it off. “Meet me downtown, at 54th and Santa Monica.”

Ryuko took blood from the vial around his neck, slicking this thumb and pointer finger, then grabbed an invisible ley line. He monkeybarred to another string, miles away, and far closer to his meeting place.

Jack sighed and flew to the random location. Among the throngs of people, he spotted Ryuko, leaning against a storefront window with a snide smirk. “What took you so long, old man?” he snapped. “Get back on two legs.”

Jack did as he said and followed Ryuko into the thrift store. Into the evening, there weren’t many people browsing the tired offerings. An older woman chewed gum behind the counter, and then Jack heard the voices.

“I got clothes, man.”

“While I may not be so hip as to these modern styles, I can’t let you walk around with holes in your shoes.”

“It’s not like we get cold or shit.”

“Language, Jack.”

“Sorry, sir.”

Jack walked as though in a dream. He pushed through the racks, behind cabinets, and shelves of dishes and kitchenware. In the back, near the shoes, was the Professor and Jack. Vampires didn’t change. The Professor was the perfectly preserved image of man Jack had named his foster sire. Potbellied, close crop of black curly hair, giant thick glasses that made his dark eyes almost bug-like, and always in pleated pants and lumpy sweater vests. The fledgling Jack, too, looked like a mirror reflection, though in ratty clothes torn by too many bad transformations to wolf and bat and back.

Jack made a strangled sound, somewhere between a whine and a whimper. Ryuko saddled up next to Jack and put a hand on his chest.

“When we feel cleaner and more put together,” the Professor was saying patiently, “we feel better about ourselves.”

“I feel just fine.”

Jack smiled. The Professor always was too patient.

“Clothes are not only for keeping warm. Otherwise, we would all wear potato sacks.”

“You don’t look that stylish, old man,” said fledgling Jack.

Jack wanted to hit his younger self, but the Professor only chuckled.

“I’m perfectly fine wearing what I wear,” he said. “It takes all sorts to make a world, old professors and tired academics included. What sort are you, young man?”

The younger Jack, though in clear and desperate need of shoes, turned away from the shoe stands and picked through the racks. “I don’t know. When I weren’t on the job, just, I guess, clean and normal.” He stopped, his hand gripping a hanger. Then, he abandoned it. “I don’t have anything to pay you with for this.”

The Professor stepped behind him and smiled. He had a great smile, soft and warm and intimate and trustworthy. “It’s okay,” he soothed. “I just want to make sure you’re going to be okay in our world. There are other ways than Downtown. Was it this?” He pulled at the hanger Jack had dropped. It was a black leather jacket, almost brand new.

Jack scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, but—”

That was all the Professor needed. The pair passed right through the older Jack and Ryuko, paid, and left the store. The hollow, empty silence echoed in his chest. The jacket around his shoulders seemed to tingle.

“Was this a good thing?” whispered Ryu. “Or did I majorly fuck you up?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Oh, Jack, come here.”

Ryuko pulled him into a hug and Jack hung his head on his shoulder. He couldn’t summon tears but over several long, aching minutes, the strange silence in his chest began to quiet.

“He seemed like a good man,” said Ryuko.

Jack could only nod.

“I tried watching him for a while, see what event I could scrounge up. Figured the jacket would be a good one.”

Jack nodded. That was a dark and dangerous road, he knew. In the past, across the ley lines, the Professor was still alive. Jack could get lost in the physical memories, the movies of special times. He still had a life in the present. The coterie, the domain, the Camarilla come to kill them all. Ryuko. This was a one-time gift.

“Thank you,” he said thickly.

Ryuko rubbed his back. “What good’s magic if it can’t help sometimes, huh? Come on, babe, let’s get you back to the present.”

  
  


The shower shut off and billows of steam followed Ryuko like a cloud. His shaggy black hair dripped down his body. He wore only one talisman, a crooked triangle that he kept for his apparent youth. 

Jack did his best to not stare and focus his energy on the book in front of him. A new one, one Ryuko had found in the past and copied onto notebooks. Unfortunately, the handwriting was terrible and full of shorthand that Jack didn’t understand.

Ryuko crawled into bed next to him and planted his lips at the base of Jack’s neck. The burning hot skin scorched his own. Jack renewed his focus and ignored him.

“You’re blushing,” he said gleefully.

“Vampires don’t blush.”

Ryuko pressed his body closer and took the notebook away. Inches away from those dark eyes, Jack lost his breath and train of thought. Ryu slipped a hand under his boxers and kissed him again. He was slender and soft and  _ his _ . Jack wove a hand through his wet hair and sighed. Sex was hard between vampires, sometimes impossible, and almost always impossible with a human. Maybe it was magic or maybe it was just Ryu, who was his own special magic, but it always came easy with him.

Ryuko winced against Jack’s lips and he pulled back.

“What’s wrong?”

This time, it was Ryuko who blushed. “Arthritis,” he muttered darkly. He withdraw his hand and fell back into bed next to Jack, clutching his stiff curled fingers.

Though their clothes were scattered throughout Jack’s bedroom, the necklaces, rings, and talismans had been carefully set on the end table and Jack grabbed the spiral silicone one. “Here.”

Ryuko glared but slipped it into his mouth. “Monroe told me that he’s got a contact who moves drugs, probably could even get me something.”

“Thought you didn’t want to get involved with crime,” said Jack, wondering what else the two of them had said. The very last thing he ever needed was for Ryuko to meet Ashley.

“I’m not talking, like, heroin,” he said scathingly. “More like, oh, I don’t know, avoiding healthcare because ghost hunting’s never come with good benefits. Fucking empty.” He grunted and threw the necklace aside.

“I got money.” Technically, Monroe’s money but if they were getting cozy, he wouldn’t bitch about a few hundred to take care of the mage.

“I don’t want your money,” he snapped. “I… Let’s just get gone.”

Ryuko stood and scavenged for his clothes, throwing Jack his own as he found them.

Jack sighed and pulled a shirt over his head. “Where we headed?”

“Ghost hunting.” Ryuko looked at him like he was stupid. “I need to recharge.”

“Yeah, no shit, dumbfuck. Got any hot leads for ghosts?”

Ryuko didn’t answer. He just grabbed Jack’s keys and slammed the door. Groaning and wondering what he had done now, Jack followed. Ryuko had started Jack’s motorcycle and only reluctantly slid behind him when Jack snapped his fingers at him.

“Where?” asked Jack.

“Downtown,” he said, sullen. “I’ll give you more directions when we get off the 101.”

Ryuko’s directions led them to a hospital under heavy construction. White plastic sheeting wrapped around it like a mummy, rickety balconies of plywood and steel pipes circling. Plywood replaced the windows on the ground floor. This late at night, there was no one and nothing around.

Jack parked at a meter. “Well, I guess this is as good a place to start as any.”

Ryuko glared. “I did my research.  _ Haunted LA’s _ next season has an episode set here.”

“That’s all bullshit and editing and dramatic reenactments,” said Jack distastefully. “Aren’t you a bit above that?”

Jack raised a length of chainlink fence and Ryuko slipped under. He set it in place behind him as he followed him around the corner to a side door.

“Remember the docks?” he snapped. “What about the Old Zoo? That hotel in Beverley?”

“You don’t need a show to tell you the Old Zoo’s haunted,” said Jack with a snort.

“Well, I’m a little desperate now, so why don’t you turn off the peanut gallery and give me a fucking hand?” he hissed, too loudly for the quiet hospital. Ryuko flexed his fingers again. They curled, gnarling into fists and then crooked shapes.

Jack swallowed. “Yeah, man. I’ll help.”

Ryuko winced. “I’m sorry, I—”

“I’m here. It’s okay.”

Jack frowned and picked up a padlock from the ground. The doors had been chained shut, but someone already broke in. Ryuko entered, shoulders tense, and there was a terrible crash and shriek of terror.

Jack ran in, fearing the worst.

Inside was almost black in the darkness. Emergency lights glowed along the bottom of the wall, illuminating peeling paint and chipped tiles. A makeshift scaffold, stacked with paint buckets and toolboxes, had come crashing down and a figure huddled beside the mess, blubbering.

“Shut up!” hissed Ryuko. “There’s  _ nothing _ here that can hurt you. Nuh-uh-uh-thing.”

The man shook his head violently. “Please!  _ Please _ don’t kill me. Oh god. Fuck.” He screamed again and Ryuko clapped a hand over his mouth.

Ryu had a point. Ghosts, aside from really nasty ones called wraiths, couldn’t even interact with the Material present. Sometimes, they could press against the gloom of the Watchtower and give a fright.

“It’s alright,” said Jack calmingly. “You’re safe.”

The man seemed to lose what was left of his senses to fear, mumbling incoherently. He bolted into the corner and folded his hands over his head.

“Huh,” said Ryuko. “Look at that, problem solved.”

“Don’t be an ass,” said Jack. He pointed to the branded windbreaker and thousand-dollar-haircut. “It’s some Hollywood trash. Could you get a look at that symbol?”

Ryuko glared but knelt down. The man swatted him some, but Ryuko persisted and pulled at the jacket. Letters stood out, red on black. “Damn. Looks like  _ Haunted LA’s _ doing some scouting for next season.”

“Just him?”

Jack strained his ears, but couldn’t sense anything beyond the three of them.

“Maybe the producer gets his jollies by scaring himself stiff,” said Ryuko. “Not our business. Come on. Let’s find a place to ring the dinner bell.”

The spooky dark hospital put Ryuko in a wonderfully good mood. All his frustrations forgotten, he whistled through the halls, lovingly stroking the weathered and decrepit equipment and walls. New paint smell mingled with mildew, and there wasn’t so much as a rat to ask for directions. Construction didn’t make it far. Jack had a terrible sinking feeling when they crawled over and pushed aside some hastily made barricades. Almost like someone was being chased and tried to hide. 

“Maybe there’s actually a real ghost that they’ve managed to find,” said Ryuko with a grin. “Something  _ really _ terrible and mean and fat and juicy. Goddamn.”

Jack wrenched aside a mattress with a grisly brown-red stain. “That’s blood,” he said with wide eyes.

“No, it’s not.” Ryuko snorted. “Ghosts can’t draw blood.”

“I think the vampire knows what blood looks like.”

The room might’ve been an office. Ryuko needed only one sniff and look before deciding it wasn’t where he wanted to call the ghost, but Jack was drawn to the computers on the table. They looked like television equipment.  _ Haunted LA’s  _ setup. He turned on a monitor and found the last minutes of footage. In grey-green nightvision, the camera captured another crewmember being hit by something invisible and dragged off-frame. The cameraman fell, too, and the camera fizzled out.

“This could be a Nos den,” said Jack fairly. “Invisible hungry things?”

Ryuko shook his head. “No. No, it can’t be. It’s gotta be a ghost.”

Jack grimaced and kept his mouth shut. Ryuko needed it to be a ghost.

Ryuko managed to find a stairwell, choked as it was with makeshift barricades, and headed downstairs. Feeling like the stupid boyfriend in a horror movie, Jack followed and decided to not point out the droplets of blood they were following.

The basement was even grimier and more forgotten than upstairs, tiled with surgery rooms and a morgue, and even more blood. Patches, now. Long-dried puddles. Ryuko persisted.

Jack transformed into a cougar and prowled ahead. Even Ryu didn’t doubt the need for protection now.

Didn’t mean the dumb bastard would stop.

Why couldn’t he just take some aspirin?

The halls began to miss tiles, revealing chipped mortar, and holes appeared. Tunnels. Scrabbings of claws on stone. Very hungry and secretive Nosferatu, but who? Jack couldn’t pretend he knew every Nos, but he knew a lot, and he also knew that everyone in Nines’ Downtown Barony went through his approval. Everyone knew Nines was picky as fuck and didn’t let any lick stay if they wouldn’t play his game.

Someone here sure was playing, but it didn’t look nice.

A scream echoed, rebounding off the ceramic tiles. Jack bounded after it, Ryuko close behind. They burst into another operating room and nothing Jack had seen, not as a vampire and not as a mage’s lover, could’ve prepared him for it.

She leaned across the operating table, where lay the man who screamed. He had lost his head, a quick death, and he wore a windbreaker like the guy upstairs. Her face buried deep into his neck, deeper than a vampire would to drink blood. She tore back a piece of flesh, chewed and swallowed.

Jack was so stunned that he lost shape and found himself back on two legs, staring.

The woman cocked her head to one side, then the other. Blood covered her mouth and her eyes glowed silver-white. Henna curled down her forehead and followed her cheekbones, sharpening her handsome Indian features, shades darker than her bronzed skin. She moved around the table, a long dark ponytail brushing her calves. “Real terror is not the sight of death, it is the fear of death. And what is the fear of death? Terror of the unknown. Is it mine eyes you peer into? No. You and I are closer kin than you and he. You, childe of Ennoia, have nothing to fear from one such as I.”

“Who the fuck are you?” asked Jack hoarsely. He backed up further as she approached, until he backed right into Ryuko.

Her voice was rich and deep, powerful. “I am but a twice-damned Cainite. First, by the False One Above for our Dark Father’s murder, and secondly by the corruption of my ancient kin, mages who sought the immortality but not the curse. In your west, Tremere rose from the ashes of the Hermetic Order into our night as a clan. In the east, Idran of the Chakravanti created the Nagaraja. Tremere cursed his own with impotent blood. Idran cursed ours to feast ourselves on flesh, as well as blood.”

Jack blinked. “Okay. We’ll just, leave you to your… feasting.”

Ryuko, though, didn’t move. “You were a mage?”

She inclined her head and moved closer still. “No,” she whispered. “My great-great-grandsires were. You are, though, aren’t you?”

Ryuko licked his lips. “Does your clan of nightfolk still have your magic?”

Jack grabbed his arm. “We gotta go, Ryu.”

Ryuko spared him a hateful glare before shaking it off.

“We do,” said the Nagaraja. “We practice necromantic arts, communion with the dead and those who linger still. Would you tell me of your practice, mageling, and why you have come?”

“I study the ley lines’ web of the city,” he said, breathless. “How they’re formed, the emotions that run them into roads of memory across the Watchtower. I came here tonight for the remnants of a ghost’s pathos, which I channel into talismans, but I’m trying to climb the Watchtowers.”

“Ascension,” said the Nagaraja approvingly. “It is a lie. The Watchtower you scrawl your name on in your dreams will never yield to your touch. It is to be evaded, not climbed.”

Ryuko paled, opening and closing his mouth without a sound. Jack took him by the shoulders and turned him back to the door.

“Thank you for your time,” said Jack tensely. “Let’s agree that we never met each other and we won’t tell Nines he’s got a rogue not-Tremere down the road. Okay? Okay.”

“Wait,” said Ryuko. He dug his nails into Jack and winced.

Jack let go and Ryuko turned to the flesh-eater again.

“What’s your name?” he asked. He extended a hand. “I’m Ryuko Saito.”

She inspected the hand curiously before taking it. “I tell none my name, but you may call me Pisha. She was a love of mine before my death, two hundred and thirty years ago. She’s no need of it anymore.”

“That’s Jack Shen, Gangrel,” said Ryu. Jack suppressed a groan. “Maybe you can help us call and dispatch a ghost.”

Pisha’s eyes wandered down Ryuko’s body, fixating on the tangle of necklaces. “I may.” 

She reached a dainty hand back towards her victim. Glimmering white smoke curled from his mouth, ears, and nose and rushed into Pisha’s waiting hand. She pressed it to Ryuko’s chest and the white light faded, the pathos pressed into to recharge his charms.

Ryuko blinked, nodding. “Wow. Can you teach me that?”

Pisha almost smiled. “It is blood magic. As conductor, it relies on the vitae in my veins, the nature of my dead body, my soul what has crossed back and forth across the Shadowlands.”

“So, that’s a no, then?”

“No.” She retreated back to her victim. The table had been set with candles and random objects Jack knew enough about to think had occult purposes: feathers, bowls, stones, needles. “I may still, however, have something to trade with you, if not spells. I seek certain occult relics and will trade you similar artifacts for them. First, though, I need that kine upstairs. He has seen too much.” Her voice almost sounded regretful.

“No,” said Jack, just as Ryuko said, “Of course.”

Ryuko raised his hands at Jack, disturbed. “You go  _ on _ about keeping your kind secret and now, just because I’ve found another mage, you won’t—”

Jack caught Pisha’s creepy white eyes. “Sorry, ma’am, but, Ryu, she’s not a mage. She’s a vampire who happens to practice blood sorcery. That’s not magic.”

“I don’t care,” said Ryuko. He snorted and stormed out, to go back upstairs.

Jack twitched a farewell smile to Pisha, who only chuckled, before he charged after Ryuko.

“You can’t tell me you’re just gonna kill some dude to get what you want?” pleaded Jack.

“What would the other nightfolk want you to do?”

“Please, this is not about the Masquerade. This is about you wanting occult artifacts and—” Jack grabbed Ryuko and forced him to look at him. “I heard what she said about Tremere and Idran. I know what you’re thinking and that’s a stupid fucking idea.”

Ryuko smirked, his eyes hard. “You have no idea.”

“Yes, I do,” he said impatiently. “You want to see if she can help you make a ritual that will make you immortal — but not a vampire. Newsflash, Tremere and Idran tried that and all they did was make  _ more _ vampires and all of them lost their magic. And they got super cursed, too.”

“That guy upstairs is gonna die,” he whispered, advancing closer to Jack who liked less and less what he saw. “Does it really matter if Pisha goes hunting or I send him down? If I do it, at least I get some cool feathers.”

Ryuko pushed his way upstairs and Jack suddenly didn’t feel so much like following him. He didn’t think Ryu’s big mouth would get him in trouble with Miss Hannibal Lecter downstairs. As scared as he was about what Ryuko would do, he was more scared about watching it. It was what he had been worried about the last fifty years. Ryuko was relentless. Cold, when he wanted to be. Greedy. Arrogant. His dark sides matched up too well with vampires’. He didn’t need people to encourage them.

Jack trudged back upstairs and felt more haunted than the condemned hospital. It held no fear for him anymore and he found the door they had broken into. That man still huddled in the corner and Ryuko whispered to him. Jack didn’t want to look. He left without another word. 

He had to give Monroe a damn piece of his mind. This was all his fault. If Jack hadn’t been left behind in nineteen-oh-four, the gang wouldn’t have run into Ryuko, who wouldn’t get it into his mind to snaggle blood from Monroe, or get encouraged to find creepy mage friends.

Pisha wasn’t even a mage.

Jack landed on the windowsill of Blue Moon’s second story. Inside, Monroe sat at a desk, staring off into space, and almost fell off his chair when Jack pecked the window. He slammed his beak into it harder. The glass cracked.

Monroe managed to open the window. “What’s — Stop that!”

Jack flapped in his face and cawed angrily.

“Use your words,” snapped Monroe, swatting him aside. “Tell me what’s happened.”

He slammed the window and Jack transformed.

“Did you know there’s a Nagaraja just — hanging out in a hospital downtown?” demanded Jack. “Because I didn’t and I let Ryu waltz right in there and now he’s killing a man for her. Oh, sure, it’s the Masquerade, but he wants to set up some Black Silk Road of trading spells and knowledge and — is it even possible anymore for mages to make new vampire clans? And, by the way, what the  _ fuck _ were you thinking when you gave him your blood again?”

Monroe stared impassively. “Are you done? Is there anything else?”

“Yeah, there is!” snapped Jack, but he hadn’t thought any further and floundered. “Just, fuck you.”

“Uh-huh. Well. Do you want a drink? I’m having a drink.”

“I don’t want any fucking drink.”

In the corner of his office was the mini fridge of a raging alcoholic. But they were all Rubio’s brews. Stouts and porters and bitters and ales. Monroe handed him one. Jack bit the cap off with a fang, only to see Monroe offered a bottle opener. He cracked his own with a wan smile.

“I had another meeting with Barty,” said Monroe. “I think he’s going to respect our autonomy.”

Jack drank. “I don’t like that. We shouldn’t be groveling for respect. Also. Big bad Camarilla Prince  _ Barty _ ?” He snorted.

“Bartholomew, if that’s better,” he said. “Barty and I have a… civil relationship.”

At the mention of his relationship, Jack felt his ears redden. He drank more. “Speaking of, Ryuko’s not some nuclear bomb you can use in a war against the Camarilla.”

“I am not making war against the Camarilla,” said Monroe irritably. “I’m trying to secure our independence, from  _ two _ princes, the remnants of Anarch LA, and the Sabbat roiling in the East. One night, Ryuko might be the difference between us living and dying.”

“That’s not a call you get to make,” said Jack.

Monroe glanced at him in a way that made Jack think he had heard him and chosen to ignore that. “He is my last resort, but he is a resort and, because of that, I need to stay on good terms with him. If I need to give a pint of blood now and again, that is a mighty small price. Besides. I need you to do something for me.”

“What?” he asked grudgingly.

“With Garcia dead, there are two flags the die-hard Anarchs will rally around,” explained Monroe. “Nines Rodriguez and Garcia’s childer. So long as his childer are swamped by Sabbat in East LA, Nines will become that flag.”

Jack shrugged. “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t plan on making war with the Anarchs  _ or _ the Camarilla,” he said. “Make sure Nines knows that I’m not some blue-blooded cape come to destroy the Free State.”

Jack had gotten used to Monroe talking about Anarchs as The Them, insisting by pride that he wasn’t part of them. Jack figured maybe he was too dumb to figure out why Monroe clung to being independent so damn much, but he didn’t like the sound of lumping the Anarchs in with the invading Cam. Tasted wrong. After all, if you weren’t Sabbat, Anarch, or Cam, it meant you had no allies when the going got tough.

“Sure, whatever,” was what he said, though. He set the bottle down. “I’ll talk to Nines, if you make sure you don’t get Ryuko into this war. It’s not his fight.”

Monroe nodded. “Of course.”

“I mean it,” he said.

“Jack,” he said sharply. “I will keep our mage a secret. No one else will know about him. I will exhaust every other option before approaching him. Remember? I didn’t ask him when Garcia Embraced Aisha or kidnapped Bella. It could’ve meant their deaths, but I kept my word to you.”

Our mage. Jack ground his fangs. He didn’t like the idea that he could’ve been responsible for Bella and Aisha, like Monroe chose to keep his promise to Jack rather than to Zari or Charlie.

“So. There’s a Nagaraja Downtown?” asked Monroe. He drank. “Hmm.”

Jack didn’t like the sound of that  _ hmm _ either. It let him know Monroe was thinking and that was always a sign of trouble.

“I didn’t mean to peck you,” he muttered. “Just, got mad.”

“Perfectly understandable,” said Monroe.

Jack’s lip quirked and he hung his head. That had been one of the Professor’s favourite things to say. He hadn’t thought about him since Ryu took them back to that night. Suddenly, the grief, sealed over with clingfilm, tore open again.

“I’m sorry about the Professor,” said Monroe, knowing in that way he knew everything.

“Do you know who killed him?” asked Jack hoarsely. “I mean, he didn’t just walk into the sun.”

Monroe’s expression tightened, ever so slightly. “Do you want to know?”

The way he asked, Jack knew he didn’t want the answer. Even so, he needed another answer, “Did you?”

“No,” he said, and Jack believed him.

“Then, I guess I don’t.”


	8. A Witch's Favour

Not for the first time, Monroe sincerely considered moving into Blue Moon. It would make it more convenient for his people to find him, surely. Private havens ensured a degree of secrecy, however, and a distant part of him refused to leave the home he had shared with Hawthorne. He resisted setting up any sort of official office hours, knowing how well it would look like a Camarilla prince holding court. 

He smiled wryly as he found the Anarch gangs adopt Jack’s address for him. Then, he heard what they said.

“Captain, hey, captain! This dense motherfucker thinks we’re all blind  _ and _ stupid.” It was Thao the Deathsinger, a frazzle of nerves and hair.

“Telling you, he didn’t take it,” insisted Orion of the Reapers.

The mix of the two gangs stormed up to him as the elevator opened. They all shouted over each other and Monroe blinked, stunned. Between the three — four — five of them, there had to be nearly two centuries of unlife.

“ _ Shut up _ ,” he said, exasperated. The Dominate couldn’t find them all, but they all felt the twinge of his seriousness. He indicated Thao. “Start again. What’s happened?”

She took a deep breath. “Crow stole from me — guns. We was arguing about it last night and I said I wouldn’t sell them. Next night, bam, they’re gone.”

Crow, a Gangrel Reaper with beady dark eyes and a hawk-like face, snarled. His fangs were long and jagged. “Told you, why would I take them? You all’d guess it’d be me.”

“Reverse psychology?” asked Midnight coldly. “Maybe there’s only ash in that melon of yours.”

Crow’s fangs snapped and Monroe laid a hand on him. He shrugged it off, hard.

“If Crow says he didn’t take them, he didn’t take them,” said Orion reasonably. “If you won’t sell, hell, I’ll find another dealer for heat. All cool.”

“Crow,” asked Monroe in a calm voice, “did you take their guns?”

Crow glared. “No.”

Monroe raised his eye to Orion. “Find Rubio, on Felicity and 49th. Tell him I sent you and he’ll give you whatever you want for free.” No need to mention that Rubio would give them anything for free regardless.

Orion relaxed and nodded his appreciation. “We will. I swear, this is just a big misunderstanding.”

“I’m sure it is.” Monroe turned back to Crow. “You have one more chance, Crow. If you’ve lied to me, I will be very angry with you. If you tell me the truth right now, I’ll forgive it. Did you steal from them?”

Crow squared up to him and snarled. “I didn’t take nothing.”

“ _ Give them back their guns _ ,” said Monroe simply. The command wrapped through Crow. If he didn’t possess the Deathersingers’ guns, he would stumble, blind and uncertain.

The anger slumped from his shoulders and Crow mechanically reached behind him and pulled something from beneath his nylon jacket. A 9mm, black but stenciled lovingly with spraypaint and a skull.

Thao snatched it back and fired. Crow slammed against the back wall, massaging his forehead. A blackened hole erupted in the skin.

Orion stared, frightened, flickering between Thao, Monroe, and his gangmate. “Swear, I had no idea,” he said.

Monroe believed him and told him as much. “The Reapers get one more chance,” he warned. “Don’t make me regret giving it.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” said Orion, but he licked his fangs compulsively. He put a hand on Crow and wrenched him to his feet. “Let me deal with my boys.”

Crow snarled and shoved Orion away. “Funny. All your bullshit about ‘who do you obey’ and big man Vent comes down with the Simon Says.”

His words hit something. Monroe felt the charge in the air. Anarchs didn’t like noticing that they were living under a Ventrue. Let alone one that used Dominate.

“You obey something,” said Monroe plainly. “We all do. You, clearly, your own base instincts and greed. Think a moment. Does it buy you friends? Does it keep you safe? Do you make your gang leader proud? Are  _ you _ proud? Choose what you obey. And choose wisely. No one’s on their own in our world.”

“You saying we get cookies and milk if we obey you?” asked Crow with a hard laugh.

“I’m saying there are benefits. Obey Orion, what does it get you? Friends. Family. People to watch your back, help you hunt, keep you alive.”

“I don’t got that many rules,” said Orion uneasily.

“Me neither.” Monroe gave Crow a hard look and caught him before Orion dragged him off. “Stealing isn’t explicitly against the rules. Maybe I overestimated everyone, though.  _ Peace _ , as I take it, means don’t take people’s shit. This isn’t the Free State. Silver Lake is independent — means you can’t rob and kill who you want, when you want, because you want. Don’t like it, I’ll show you the door.”

Crow didn’t so much as caw again.

Truly, he had expected far worse. Maybe it was Rubio keeping back the tide, or Ashley’s influence of fear, revulsion, and adoration. Still, he knew the Anarchs would test his rule — but, he expected outright murder, not petty thievery.

Thao put another bullet in Crow, who jerked and hissed pathetically. “We good,” she said with a nod. “Orion, make sure he gives us the other one.”

Orion didn’t take his eyes off Monroe. “Will do, man. I — I’m sorry.”

Mistrust charged the air and Monroe scanned the basement, searching for a way to disperse it. “Julius, Copper, Blake, he called. The two thinbloods drank at the bar with Blake Swan and Alice Zhao. Blake’s good spirits could raise the dead.

Orion sighed in relief as Blake loped over. “Hey, how’s it hanging, dude?” asked Blake with a powerful smile. His tawny hair matched his eyes precisely and ice white tendons strained against his forearms and t-shirt. He clapped a hand on Midnight’s back and whistled as he caught sight of Thao’s gun. “Pretty piece of kit. Gotta piece myself I’d love you to put a spin on.”

Thao smiled crookedly. “You got yourself a deal.”

Monroe and Blake shared a look and something subtle passed between them — more subtle than most thought Blake capable of. He might not know how to add two and two, but he could read a room. The Presence leaking out of him was almost artistic in its application.

“Yo, dawg,” said Blake excitedly, “I got these bomb friends you should meet, Reaper boys. Some rad thinbloods.”

Thao’s lips threatened a sneer through his Presence. “ _ Thinbloods _ ?”

“They’re welcome in my domain,” said Monroe stiffly, but his voice wasn’t needed. Blake had it well in hand.

“People, my girl. Sweet Julius and shining Copper. People like you and me — leeches, blood gods, you know, kindred spirits.”

A stiff moment passed between the Reapers and Deathsingers before they agreed to follow Blake and put their troubles behind them with drinks and new friends. Monroe reflected that he might be putting too many eggs into Ashley’s basket.

He retreated upstairs and slid into a booth and, for the moment, relaxed. This early in the eve, the stage was dark and music poured out of the sound system. Humans mingled at the bar or loitered on the floor, cheerful without being drunk. He caught some smiles. From the smell of it, he could have his pick of orphans if he wanted. He liked these times in his venue. Quiet. Bare of the chaos later in the night, but not dead.

Just as he was about to return downstairs for a drink, he felt it.

He didn’t see anyone. A sixth sense, not Discipline in nature, warned him of another presence close. Leather croaked as someone sat. A scent of must and cologne. Directly across him, though there was no one there.

Monroe glared. “Blue Moon is a sanctum,” he said. “I tolerate no violence or Disciplines.”

“That so, Monroe?” came a slick greasy voice. “Don’t think you’d want me visible among your humans.”

The voice tickled something in the depths of his memories, a place he wasn’t fond of. A warren. “If you have business with me, we can retire to my office,” he said.

“Sounds like a plan, captain.”

Monroe indicated for the voice to follow him to the elevator and didn’t let the door close until he felt hot breath on the back of his neck. He refused to let himself be intimidated.

Upstairs, the elevator opened to his public office. Records hung around the top of the room like a frame, while a hallway led off into the private quarters. 

Monroe hadn’t dealt with this clan in some years. He looked to his desk, a standard and orderly wooden affair, but the symbol of superiority wouldn’t set well with them who were so used to being mistreated.

Monroe indicated the seating area, just a plain couch and two armchairs. He prepared himself and turned, letting his mouth run as he took in the non-invisible form of Clan Nosferatu. “Please, you are always welcome in my domain, sir. Can I get you any refreshment?”

Monroe refrained from stuttering over the notation of respect. Among many of the Clan of the Hidden, sex could be indeterminate, though this one appeared male. Their Embrace and curse twisted the otherwise normal mortals into physical monsters. No two ever looked alike, aside from their demonic visage. This one wore a tuxedo and had scaly grey-green skin that proved hairless as an egg. His bony features hinted at gargoyles.

The Nosferatu’s mouth twisted into a sneer. Rows of shark-like teeth glimmered within. “Name’s Gary Golden, and I’m fine, thank you.” He extended a hand, the fingers gnarled like tree roots and sharper than fangs.

“Matthew Monroe.” Monroe took it and shook it firmly. Golden looked surprised that he did. Nails scraped runs in his hand. “Mr Golden, please, sit.”

Golden sat. Despite the appearance, there was a noble poise to him, almost Ventrue. Combined with the tuxedo, Monroe almost wondered if Golden wanted to impress him. It didn’t work.

“What brings you to see me tonight?” he asked.

“Wanted to see what all this fuss was about. Woke up one night and my boy tells me Garcia’s dead and there are a dozen new barons laying claim to Angels.”

“I’m afraid Mr Mitnick was correct,” said Monroe. “The Barony of Angels is no more. A few scattered peaceful neighbourhood domains still exist, but the rest is a wasteland.”

Golden blinked at the name. Monroe wasn’t supposed to know that name. Clan Nosferatu knew things.  _ They _ skulked in the sewers, hid invisibly in private havens, and traded secrets like boons.

“He told me we have a new overlord.” Golden’s tones became distinctly less pleasant.

“I’m no one’s overlord. I’ve held Silver Lake with my coterie, by gift of Jeremy MacNeil, and expanded my reach to support those who come seeking refuge.” Monroe smiled as Golden scowled. “I will happily shelter any who come from the wasteland, but I’m not a baron. Switzerland, here, is independent from the Free State.” Golden’s scowl only deepened. “Is something wrong?”

“There are two sorts in this world that I don’t trust.” Golden leaned forward and folded his clawed hands together. “Liars and frauds. In my experience, and my clan’s, anyone from any background can be either but you know what types have the most?”

Monroe knew the answer and gave it freely.

“Toreador and Ventrue.”

Golden started. “You’re not getting on my good side by bad mouthing your own people.”

“I left the clan five decades ago,” said Monroe. “They aren’t my people.”

“Who is?”

“Those who want to be.”

Golden’s dull yellow eyes caught him in a fierce glare. “I value loyalty, Mr Monroe. Integrity. To that end, I must ask you to address a rumour.”

“Rumours are rarely the friends of outcasts.”

“True, but rarely are they started without cause.”

Monroe hadn’t expected such cordiality from the clan infamous for living in sewers. “Ask away, Mr Golden.”

“You abandoned a childe two weeks ago. Why?”

The accusation hurt more than receiving it from such a low clan. “I did no such thing,” he said, struggling and succeeding to maintain control over his voice. “I sired a loyal ghoul upon her death. She made the choice to leave and I am not one to keep childer imprisoned. If you wish to pursue the rumour, I advise you to find her.”

The unchanging look in Golden’s eye told Monroe he already knew the details. Perhaps he had already spoken with Hawthorne. Monroe wondered if she had given him a good review. Doubtful.

“I have a choice to make, Mr Monroe,” said Golden. “You and Ashley Swan both claim domain on the topsoil of which my childer and I live.”

The Nosferatu of Hollywood, of course. Monroe strained his memory to remember them. Perhaps he had met them once or twice when he had first arrived in LA, when Jeremy MacNeil still hosted a politico cafe called the Taste in his barony. 

“I hope Mr Swan gave you a kind reception,” said Monroe dryly.

Golden smirked. “I like looking rotten roses in the face. Like the mirror, it builds character.”

“I apologize.”

“No need to do that on his behalf.”

“I’m not.” Monroe inclined his head. “I’m doing it on behalf of the treatment you suffered.”

Golden seemed to sit straighter. His head cocked like a strange stone bird. “Well, then. I accept, Mr Monroe. Thank you.”

“As to your existence in Hollywood, I have no issue with it and, frankly, even if Mr Swan wanted to evict you I severely doubt he has the capabilities to even find you.”

Golden swelled at the compliment. Even with the Nosferatu reputation for hiding and aggressive secrecy, that was an exaggeration, especially considering Ashley’s perchance for powers he had no right to. 

“My kids may come around, time to time,” said Golden. “I’ll remember this hospitality, sir.”

Golden stood, Monroe with him.

The term of hospitality, an old Tradition among the Camarilla, was certainly something to file away.

“I would like you to note something else, before you leave, Mr Golden,” said Monroe. He placed a hand on the back as it began to fade to invisibility. “I remain autarkis. I am not Camarilla, but I am Ventrue.”

He was close enough to smell the underground must on Golden’s shoulder. “And what do you mean by that?” he asked politely.

“I mean that I value my station and my people,” he said. “For that, I will always pay the highest price. If you ever think you have a higher buyer, you are wrong, sir.”

Golden held his eye until the rest of Obfuscate fell over him and Monroe felt him step into the elevator.

Monroe loathed Nosferatu. Spies. Secret brokers. A clan hated for its ugliness and reclusiveness, when it should’ve been hated for its fairweather loyalties. A loyalty always up for sale. 

He hoped Golden remembered his words.

The elevator appeared empty when the doors shut. Golden gone, Monroe strained to reach his vision through Auspex. The power strange to his blood, he struggled for the second sight. The colour drained from the world and he spied the red glyphs that marked his magical security, but no invisible Nosferatu. Golden had truly left.

Compulsively, Monroe checked his phone. Nothing.

The elevator opened. Monroe tensed, caught unawares, but only stared at the new and unwelcome guest. Regardless, he gave her a bright smile.

“Madame Orsay Grimaldi, what an unexpected pleasure.”

He had no idea how she had crossed Blue Moon downstairs, but it must’ve been with many wide eyes. The fiend was red from head to toe and cloaked in an alien beauty and allure that had nothing to do with Presence. Hair and clothes the colour of black blood, her lips and eyes vibrant. Her skirts and many layers of shawls dragged like a Prague street urchin. Trinkets that appeared to be intricately carved ivory hung in necklaces and as pins in her hair. Monroe knew them to be human bone. A pretty face of strong Eastern European features gazed at him impassively. Long before he had paid her for services rendered with a mansion in Beverly Glen, she had lived in the hills; Ashley’s new domain. She never left.

She extended a hand white as bone. He kissed it.

“Captain Monroe, may I congratulate you on your triumph over Salvador Garcia?”

“You may,” he said coyly. “May I get you something to drink?”

“I’m alright, thank you.”

She enjoyed his company, he knew. He enjoyed hers, in his own way. Like he once had in Camarilla domains, she lived on the edge of Anarch LA, a recluse who others came to only for business. Her presence here only boded ill.

Orsay sat herself in the chair Golden had only just vacated. Rather than opposite, Monroe sat next to her on the couch.

“I hope you haven’t been too impacted by the chaos in Angels,” he said. “If so, I do apologize.”

“It is no matter,” she said with a thin smile. “My independence has been something I have always guarded most carefully.”

“I as well. Many things can be said about the late Garcia, but his concept of  _ libertas _ , the unalienable free will of choice and self-determination, cannot be argued against.”

“The concept burns at the heart of every Cainite,” she agreed. “Set free of the shackles of mortality, enslaved to the Beast but no other.”

“But no other,” Monroe echoed. “I would delight in a social opportunity, but things have moved quickly and I beg forgiveness for my mercenary mind. Why have you come tonight?”

Orsay’s smile faded. “You are correct. I do have purpose here tonight.” She took an unnecessary breath and spoke with all candor and sincerity. “Matthew Monroe, I call upon a major boon owed to me.”

“What?” snapped Monroe before he could shove the word back in.

He did not owe boons. Exceedingly rarely. He preferred to do business immediately. Favours, while they did build a reputation, always promised an unknown return favour at an unknown date. Always inconvenient. As easy as it was to write an IOU, debt always came due.

“I acquired a major boon of your service,” said Orsay mysteriously.

“Ashley,” muttered Monroe.

He was going to kill the bastard.

Ashley Swan had destroyed the local chapter of Catholic hunters for Monroe, in exchange for a major boon. He wouldn’t have done it for anything less. Monroe had expected something unsavoury, maybe even being forced to give up his blood to Ashley like a whore. Not for him to sell his boon like a stock option. Monroe hoped he had made it worth his while.

“I will honour it,” he said reluctantly. Paying off major boons required spilling blood or great personal risk. “What did you have in mind?”

“You know my origins,” said Orsay pleasantly. “Clan Tzimisce has its streak of independence but most of us cling to the sect we helped found. The Sword of Caine. It, too, is where I name my roots.”

“I’m familiar with the Sabbat.” A delicate way of putting things. Monroe had a large part to play in the Siege of New York, when the Camarilla had taken New York from them. He had started that war, which still raged along the eastern seaboard.

“Indeed. I left my sect four decades ago, yet I did not leave alone. We went our separate ways, but these are people I once named brothers and sisters. Azalea and her pack have lived in San Diego. That is no longer possible.”

Monroe played a frown. “Why not?”

Orsay returned his confused expression. “Why, the baron turned the city over to the Camarilla. Since she vanished, so has any semblance of law and order. In service of a major boon, I call for them a safe journey into Silver Lake, as well as safety and protection for them, to call them your own.”

Monroe passed a hand through his hair. Unideal. Messy. However, since the Camarilla and Sabbat had been at war since their foundings five centuries ago, accepting the pack might throw suspicion any had of him turning to the Tower. The Sabbat couldn’t be guaranteed to be peaceful, though. And they certainly wouldn’t mind Blake the way others did. Ashley had landed him in a heap of trouble for trading that boon away.

“Mr Monroe,” said Orsay, her voice soft and intense, “you have always been good to me, even when others haven’t. MacNeil and those who followed him tolerated me, but none would accept the Sabbat.”

“There has never been any doubt as to if I would accept this charge,” he said heavily. “I trust your honour that Mr Swan has, in fact, given you my boon. I will fulfill this. If you would, could you provide me with names and descriptions of the pack?”

Orsay’s information did nothing to soothe his nerves. Lasombra, the clan of shadow mystics and Dawinistic cutthroats. Another Nosferatu. A member of a sea-faring bloodline of Gangrel. Most of considerable age, like herself. Elder neonates, sired nearly a century ago. Physically and magically powerful. Uncontainable, if need should come to it.

“They’ll arrive next Monday, at LAX,” she said. “Roads out of San Diego have been nightmarish.”

“No doubt.”

Worse news. To get in and out of LAX could be next to impossible. All of Angels was a wasteland. And the airport was too close to this supposed Westside Prince’s land. His coterie could be in great jeopardy. Monroe knew at once that he had the right to deny. This was worth at least a major boon from another member of his coterie. Then again, the boon was his. Not theirs.

Denying was not in the cards, though. His honour had been called and he would answer.

“Madame Orsay, to settle our manner of a major boon, I will see the Hollowmen to safety in Silver Lake and provide for them as I do any other in my domain,” he offered.

Satisfied, Orsay shook him on it.

“This means a great deal to me,” she said, relieved. “Thank you.”

Monroe gently but firmly directed their pleasantries to the door. Every moment she stayed, the more angry he became. In Camarilla domains, boons were sacrosanct, chartered in a ledger by the court’s herald. Public knowledge. Boons might well be traded, but the debtor knew precisely who held his service.

As Orsay left, Monroe quickly dialed a number.

Ashley took his sweet time answering. When he did, Monroe could hear a party behind him. Loud music, laughing.

“My favourite autarkis—”

“You traded Orsay my major boon?” he hissed.

He could hear Ashley’s smirk. “Dear me, is this about the Hollowmen? Good luck with that, sweet thing.”

“Where are you?”

He laughed. “Somewhere quite far away from you right now. My hide thanks me for that.”

“Ash,” snapped Monroe. His flippant attitude only irked him further. “I  _ want _ to work with you. I  _ want _ to keep an alliance between us, but you are making things exceedingly difficult right now.”

“Whoa, hold on.” Ashley shifted the phone. “You owed me a favour. I owed Orsay. So, what, I swapped them.”

“You didn’t tell me,” said Monroe coldly.

“You wouldn’t have liked it.”

Monroe ground his fangs and stowed his anger. Ashley was not worth wasting breath on. “I will not forget this,” he swore.

For several seconds, all Monroe could hear was the beat of the music.

“I’ll be at Blue in ten.”

The line went dead.

Monroe hadn’t been this angry in some time. He needed an outlet for his anger, quickly. His fists clenched and unclenched. Mortals might have physical reactions to emotions, but kindred were forced to bottle them until releasing them like a rocket. He was not fool enough to believe he could let it simmer or that Ashley would stand quietly and allow himself to be yelled at. Worse still, the Beast could sense the anger and want to take it out on the rose.

How dare he? The two-timing wretch. And after Garcia. He thought he had put all this betrayal and shadowy motives behind him. Monroe had made a mistake trusting him with an inch. Perhaps he should hurt him. Make him pay. Even better, make  _ him _ go out and fetch the Hollowmen. What a mess Ashley had landed him in — and he knew what Orsay wanted, how difficult it would be.

That was the Beast talking. Not him. Monroe steeled himself. His hands shook. Not him. The Beast, of Ventru, Artemis Orthia, Fowler, perhaps now Garcia. He could control himself. 

_ Enslaved to the Beast but no other. _

Monroe ripped one of the records from the wall and threw it down the hall. It slashed through the wallpaper. Shattering glass scattered like slivers of diamond. The destruction didn’t give him near the relief he needed, but it took the edge off.

The Ashley that arrived at Blue Moon would not be one many recognised. While he did wear a blazer without a shirt and tight trousers, as was his custom, he also wore a sharp guarded look in his eye. For once, no Presence announced his arrival and he held his sunglasses at his side. A strong stillness lingered in his features, one that gave away his age. He was Monroe’s contemporary.

“You’re angry,” said Ashley simply. “Fair enough, but you know me. In what universe would I consider your feelings above my own convenience?”

“The one in which you wish to conduct a partnership with me,” he said coldly.

Ashley sighed and stretched out on the couch. It had seen entirely too many visitors tonight. “I am your first and last and only choice for an alliance,” he said sensibly. “No one else would take a Ventrue autarkis, especially with Vaughn breathing down our necks from the Valley. From where I’m sitting, it seems to me like you have no choice but to stomach me. Quietly.”

Monroe did not sit. “You offered the alliance, not me. Why, if you intend to insult me? I’m beginning to feel like one of your damned childer.”

“Easy, bitch,” said Ashley lightly, but the threat lingered. Like most kindred with broods, he was immensely fond of his progeny. “I like you. I even respect you. I know that, for your own, you would butcher your way through a million babies to save them. In the storm that’s coming, I’m counting on that.”

The compliment, if it was such, rung true. Monroe did not like to think of himself so crude or cruel, but his people came first, above whatever moral standards he had.

Still, they were getting somewhere.

Monroe had a plan. The pieces of the plan soothed his anger. 

“If you want me to consider you among that lofty number, you need to give me reason to trust you.” He sat next to Ashley, who raised his chin as though to be taller than him.

“Is securing Hollywood not enough?” he asked. “Is letting you claim it in name not enough? What about my gift of those thinblood Alchemists?”

“That’s the past. You have no integrity, no honour, no loyalty. You are right, I have little choice for an ally—”

“You love my lack of honour, sweetheart,” said Ashley with a lazy smile. “You would’ve simply killed the Society, but you secretly wanted me to ghoul them. Powerful Catholic hunters? No one makes better slave guards. With Dominate you can click your fingers to wreck their minds, but my methods are a little more… intensive.”

Monroe refrained from baring his fangs. He could say nothing in argument aside from, “Don’t call me ‘sweetheart’.”

Ashley, who had little respect for personal space or boundaries, surprised him by heeding it. For now. “I want to survive what’s coming,” he said. “It’s in my best interests to remain on your good side.”

Monroe smiled wanly. “I told Zari the same thing.”

Ashley snorted with derision. “She doesn’t understand. None of these Anarch-sired neonates know what the Camarilla is like. They will, though.”

“To the end of our mutual survival, I must know that I can count on you,” said Monroe, searching Ashley as he spoke.

Ashley’s sharp intelligence wiped away any of his frivolous act. “If I’m not with you, I’m against you, is that it?”

“No, not necessarily—”

“Because it should be,” he said shortly. “You and me. Yours and mine. Fuck everyone else. Vaughn has already proven smarter than Barnes. Barnes came right up to Angels and set up shop, with all that, ‘All kindred are part of the Camarilla whether they know it or not’ bullshit. Dead in a week. Vaughn purged the Valley already. He knows he needs to conquer LA. You and I know what comes next: the Danse, blackmail, betrayal, a web of boons so thick that you can’t tell where anything started and where anyone stands.” Ashley lay a hand on Monroe’s leg and gripped tight. “I won’t go back to the Camarilla. We  _ are _ on the same side.”

The intensity surprised him, and worried him. He hadn’t anticipated the ambitious Ashley to have such venom against the Tower. Things could change, though. Eternity was too long to think they wouldn’t.

“Then act like it,” said Monroe coolly. “I’m not asking you to tell me everything. Only the things that affect me and our partnership.”

The cunning leached away and, as it did, Ashley’s hand lingered on his leg in a different way. One Monroe did not like. “I will,” he swore.

“Since you dropped the Hollowmen mess on my lap, you will help me settle this.”

“Of course. It just so happens that I have a disposable force of ghouls well versed in vampire hunting.” He smiled pleasantly.

Monroe scowled. “Absolutely not. I plan on taking Harper. She’s had deals with the Society in the past. She’ll recognise them.”

Ashley sighed, surely imagining his ghouls perishing in a fit of vengeance. The far more likely course would be Monroe himself dying, or Harper charging after the Swans. Neither would do.

“Very well,” he said blithely. “I’ll make sure to ghoul up some others.”

“And you can’t be alienating Nosferatu,” said Monroe, exasperated. “Especially when the Camarilla comes. With Rubio, we should have an adequate information network, but insulting Nos is blatantly stupid. The last thing we need is Gary Golden living in your shower drain.”

“I knew he’d come to you,” said Ashley with a shrug. “Nosferatu expect Toreador to treat them like garbage. So long as we two play to people’s perceptions, we can control our images.”

“That was clever,” he admitted. “No one can say you aren’t a despicable creature, full of low cunning and more ambition than scruples.”

Ashley smiled lazily. “You’re just telling me what I want to hear. Don’t stop.”

Monroe indicated the hand on his leg. “What do you think this will accomplish?” he asked, amused. 

Ashley’s eyes roamed his face. Monroe could see the lies considered and disregarded.

“I want Dominate,” he said at last, deciding on the truth. “I’ll even make it nice for you.”

Kindred, especially ones of their age, knew little of erotic desire outside the pleasure of feeding. While Camarilla refused any risk of blood bonds as suspect, free-loving Anarch domains could be a terrible tangled mess of one-part and two-part bonds. Young ones, and those greedy for followers, often added a certain sentimentality and human erotica to their feeding. Garcia had been famous for bedding while letting others bite him.

“Convince me why I should give it to you,” said Monroe.

“If you insist.”

Ashley raised an eyebrow and the world shifted, becoming smaller, focusing on his face. The rich classical beauty, like a walking Greecian statue than a vampire. Monroe felt a deep glow and longing in his chest—

“I meant why I should let you have Dominate,” he said dryly. “Turn that off.”

Grumbling, Ashley obliged. The desire left a hollow emptiness in him. “Presence can accomplish much, but not all. Besides, no one expects a Toreador to have Dominate. The aspect of surprise would be valuable alone, an asset the Camarilla would not suspect.”

“Valid points.” The most valid point of all was the one-part blood bond to have Ashley under. It would make him that much more trustworthy. All part of the plan. Monroe shrugged out of his jacket and rolled up a sleeve. Ashley looked at it with disdain. “I’ll let you put your fangs in my neck when Gehenna comes for us. One final thing. What did Orsay give you in exchange for my boon?”

Ashley, who had inched closer at the ordained offer, started and stared. “She helped me secure Hollywood. Cainite alarms across the major roads,” he said. “I’ll get a magic pager of a name who crosses them. That was our deal, right? If I manage its security, you can add it to your empire and I can operate freely.”

Monroe nodded. Good answer. He bit into his wrist. The room bloomed with the scent of vitae and Ashley stared at it with open lust.

“This is not a gift,” said Monroe firmly. “I will teach you and help you with Dominate, but it is a boon.”

That grabbed his attention. Ashley whipped his head up. “Blood spilled makes this a major boon.”

“Indeed.”

“A major boon  _ and _ helping you settle the Hollowmen  _ and _ a one-part bond?”

Monroe couldn’t keep the smile off his face. He had won, and for such a small concession really. “In exchange for keeping this alliance intact  _ and _ Dominate.”

Ashley gave his most sinister smile, the one he reserved for his closest allies. “Then, I suppose I better make it worth my while.”

Ashley grabbed his wrist roughly, fingers digging into the skin. Fangs descended in his mouth. Monroe wrenched the arm, but Ashley held tight. They struggled and Monroe couldn’t help but feel Ashley let him win. 

“You can drink, but don’t you dare bite me.”

Ashley raised an eyebrow. “You could do with being a little less uptight.”

“Between us, I think you fulfill that quota. Drink or don’t, but leave your fangs where they are.”

Glaring, Ashley showed his fangs retracting and Monroe let him up. He offered his wrist again, already bloodied, and it was not fangs but lips that touched it. The act felt odd and barren, to him. To Ashley, assuredly, it was half a joy. Monroe remembered the taste of Garcia’s lifeblood, still. Feeding was the greatest pleasure, a combination of the taste of blood and feeling of fangs in flesh, surpassed only by the Kiss. Mortals became addicted to it. Kindred, in battle, surrendered to it and died with smiles on their faces.

Ashley made it worth his while. Monroe let him drink, far, far longer than was necessary for him to find Dominate in the Ventrue blood.

The position brought an ache to Monroe, which grew deeper the longer it went on. It did not cause pain. It was a hollow feeling, an emphasis of lacking, entirely unrelated to Ashley’s weedling Presence. This position — sitting on a couch, next to a form who fed with such obvious pleasure while he himself felt nothing other than a fondness for the vulnerable — was how ghouls were fed. For almost a century, Monroe had given Hawthorne blood this way. Every week. 

Eventually, Ashley pulled away, his purple eyes dark and hooded. In the suddenness, Monroe didn’t manage to contain his emotions. Ashley showed him more grace than he thought him capable of and didn’t mention it.

The elevator opened. Fearful of rumours, Monroe stood and put distance between himself and Ashley, who only laughed. Monroe didn’t. Not when he saw who else had come.

“Ashley, get out of here,” he whispered. He had no more breath in him to raise his voice. 

Ashley glanced at the elevator, then clapped Monroe on the back. “Apples don’t fall far from the tree, do they? Even rotten, wormy ones.”

The woman in the elevator stepped out, a long slender white cane sweeping the ground before her. Ashley stepped around her and left, still smirking, and Monroe knew he would have rumours to deal with. 

She stopped some distance before him, her back straight and chin proud. A tailored black trenchcoat fell to her knees, over a blouse and slacks ironed to a razor sharp crease. Sensible boots. Sleek black hair shone in glamorous curls above her shoulders, the impractical hairstyle she had latched onto in the fifties as a mark of her freedom. Her skin didn’t match his memories. In life, it had held a gentle sunkissed tan, but his blood had drained it from her. Now, nearly bone white.

The black eyes hardened like flint. Her grip on a slender white cane tightened.

“Good evening, my childe,” he said to Miss Hawthorne.

In the end, Monroe found out he did, in fact, have a heart because it ached. Last they had talked, he had ensured she knew she could always return, as she equally insisted she never would. To be proven right felt bittersweet.

“You didn’t change the locks,” she said, her voice a brisk wind. “You should have. It was small matter to get in.”

Monroe indicated the couch, then felt like a fool. “If you decided to act against me, the locks would be the least of my worries. Would you like to sit?”

Every inch of her was taut like a bowstring, ready to fire. She breathed, long and slow, something clearly on her mind. “No.”

“How was Westside?” he asked.

Hawthorne didn’t flinch. She was too well-bred for such obvious reactions, but Monroe knew her tiny microexpressions. The twitch of an eyebrow, a quirk in her jaw. “Adequate,” she said. “I found it lacking in certain key points.”

“Did Voerman treat you well?” He dared not ask of LaCroix. Worse still, a lingering practical part of him feared Hawthorne had not left Westside but been  _ sent _ .

“Yes, sir, she did.”

Hawthorne only ever called him that when she hid something, whether it be worry or a lie. He didn’t pry.

“Would you like to go downstairs?” he asked. “The Deathsingers aren’t terrifically talented, but the kindred cultural references make up for it.”

Her soft lips tightened. She gripped her hands harder and shut her eyes, as though holding something back. “I am not here out of choice. I am here out of necessity. Once that is no longer true, I will leave again.”

“I accept that,” he said gently. “Tell me what I can do for you, here and now.”

Monroe was an idiot, that much he knew. Never had he thought he was a sentimental idiot. No matter how often he would repeat his duty to himself, he had no thought of it as the offer passed his lips.

“I do not know what my future may hold and, in that light, I want to be set and recognised by the Directorate,” said Hawthorne, her voice only growing lower and colder. “I don’t want doors to shut behind me.”

Monroe’s eyes widened in amazement. “You want me to set your agoge.”

“No Ventrue will ever accept me as part of the clan without it. Despite being… as he is, my sire is still a recognised blood of the Directorate of Kings.”

“No part of the Camarilla,” he clarified. “Anarchs, so long as they know your clan, will treat you as such.”

Hawthorne’s eyes narrowed. “What on earth makes you think I want to spend eternity in some lawless, war-ridden wasteland?”

I, not we.

“Lack of recent experience among the Camarilla.”

“Lest you forget, I was enslaved to the Ivory Tower as a ghoul in the Old World when you were still killing Indians,” she said witheringly. “Some domains are better than others. Some princes better than others.”

“All of them rely on playing a game—” Monroe realised as he spoke. “They rely on playing a game you have no experience in. Politics. Intrigue. Social posturing, maneuvering, Dansing.”

Hawthorne leaned forward attentively. “It’s all part of the agoge, isn’t it?”

Monroe regretted his answer. “Yes, it is, but I would rather not give you the tools of Machiavelli.”

She tensed further, her voice hardening. “Why not, when I could use them to build a life for myself?”

“Because I’ve seen too many be used by those same tools. They become the ends, rather than the means. The goal of sabotaging a rival is not to toy with him, but to remove a threat to your operations and life.” Monroe stopped himself before his mouth ran away from him. This wasn’t what he wanted. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had gotten what he wanted.

Hawthorne nodded. “You know the game.”

Monroe stood to shut the door and then moved closer to her. “You want me to teach you how to play petty politics when the Camarilla are massing for war with an archon and I — and, by extension, you, so long as you remain — are trapped as autarkis in the middle?”

“Autarkis,” she repeated with a dim look. “Aren’t you a bit old to cling to that fairy tale? Unwilling or not, you serve the Camarilla.”

“We all have our own ways,” he said diplomatically. “All I ask is for you to respect mine.”

“Respect?” she spat. “Is—” She cracked her neck and the anger rolled down her.

“You know I won’t hurt you,” he said, expecting what would surely come. “Speak your mind.”

“No,” she said firmly. “If we want to remain civil with each other, we won’t talk about that.”

Monroe passed a hand over his face. “Alright. We don’t need to.”

Hawthorne had never wanted to be a kindred. Monroe had dutifully asked her every decade for her permission to Embrace her. Each time, a no. He respected it, until her death. Riddled with bullets, one had torn through her head and even the Blood couldn’t repair the damage to her eyes.

“Is there anything I should know, about your condition?” he asked softly.

“I can manage perfectly fine without your help,” she said with venom.

Evidently, she couldn’t. After all, she had come back. But Monroe took her word for it that she could manage her blindness without him.

“I don’t yet have a replacement ghoul,” he said. “But our house is still untouched. You’re welcome to move back, or I could find other accommodations for you.”

Hawthorne didn’t answer for several minutes, a mute, still statue. “I’ll come back.”

Monroe saw little hope in her words. Hawthorne accepted him as her sire and a necessity if she ever wanted a place in the Camarilla, but she did not forgive him. He didn’t need her forgiveness, he told himself. Even he didn’t believe the lie.

“Thank you,” he said heavily. “We can begin the agoge tomorrow—”

“Tonight.”

Hawthorne hadn’t moved, but a fear clung to her demand like oil. What possibly could’ve happened to her? That she wanted to return to the Camarilla didn’t surprise him, but this did. Deeply. She was afraid. Whatever had happened, she came of her own accord, not as a pawn of LaCroix.

Monroe used to dream of this moment, when he Embraced Hawthorne, sat her down and told her the clan oratory, the story of their kind, the duty that lay at the heart of the Ventrue Beast, passing the torch through an unbroken line of ten thousand years. He had failed himself, though, and he gave it to a woman who he had betrayed rather than his friend.

“Your lineage will be the first thing any Ventrue will want to know when they speak to you,” he said. “Myself, Alastair Fowler, Jenine Portier, Democritus, Lysander, Artemis Orthia, Ventru, and then, mythologically speaking, Enoch and Caine. Recite it.”

She did perfectly.

“Who are you?”

Hawthorne took a breath. She would’ve spent the last two centuries listening to Ventrue give their statement. Her lips tightened. “I am Audrey Hawthorne of the Clan of Kings, Tenth of the Line of Artemis Orthia, and—” She lowered her head and stumbled over it “— and childe of Matthew Monroe, the Autarkis of Los Angeles.”

Monroe reached out his hand. Maybe to take hers, or to pull her close, or to smooth the lines in her brow. He retracted it before she could notice he had moved. She didn’t want his comfort. He had no right to give it.


	9. Sins of the Sire

Charlie didn’t like the pit of guilt that festerd in her gut. Despite Monroe’s promise that no one would blame her for the Professor’s death, she felt he meant more like  _ he _ wouldn’t blame her. Zari, probably, wouldn’t blame her. Jack, though, it became clearer night by night, would. Absolutely. He loved the Professor like a father — or, sire, she guessed — and her one moment of murderous weakness had completely soured things between them. She hadn’t talked to him for days.

Jesse popped in a new DVD and, once again, extolled the great advancement of Blockbusters that didn’t close at six. A stack of exhausted anime teetered on the floor next to the bed. Jesse leaned back, hands crossed behind her head as the TV started. Charlie sat up and flipped through an old edition of  _ The Fifth Estate _ , only to avoid looking at Jesse.

Jesse tugged on her shirt. “Come on,” she egged. “If you’re gonna let me introduce you to the magic girl genre, you need to watch  _ Sailor Moon _ . It’s all downhill from here.”

A cheery drums and electric guitar sang out across nebula and space.

“You were right,” said Charlie, almost to herself. “We probably should be exterminated or something. Maybe humans could find a vaccine or cure.”

“Whoa.” Jesse grabbed for the clicker and the show jittered to a stop. “What — Where did that come from? Sure, vampires are evil, that’s kinda what they do.”

That only made her feel worse. Charlie grumbled, “Never mind.”

“You’re different,” said Jesse. Her leg bounced as the words toppled out of her. “You’re not so bad. Maybe it’s because you’re young, but you still got a sister—”

“Who I’m never seeing again.”

“You were turned, against your will—”

“Like most of us.”

Vampires didn’t blush but the shadows darkened around the room and Jesse’s aura scrambled, shifting colours. “You’re cool,” she said again, but differently, like she was embarrassed.

Before Charlie could say anything, Jesse started the show again and notched the volume higher.

The air between them thickened. What did Jesse mean by that? They had started to become friends over the last few weeks, but was it possible she was flirting with her? Why? Charlie didn’t even know how to process that. Romance was pretty low on her list of priorities. Jesse could be coarse and violent, but she had a heart and it was in the right place. She was neither beautiful nor handsome, but striking, stark white and abyssal black, her stocky form built for strength. Charlie shook her head of the thoughts. That wasn’t something she was prepared to face. Besides, it probably didn’t mean anything.

“I’ve killed people.” She was shocked by how easily the words came to her. “When I was first turned, I was hungry and drank too much. And you know about the Professor.”

Jesse digested that and not well. She rubbed her hands and the shadows in the room darkened further with her mood. “It wasn’t you, that guy,” she said. “That was your maker’s fault, the parasite—”

“The Beast.”

“Yeah, the Beast. And no one blames you about the Professor. He basically sold your baby sister to a maniac who wanted you all dead.”

Charlie couldn’t shake the guilt. If Jack was right, the Professor’s offer of help and kind nature hadn’t been an act. His coterie, a gang of neonates who had been fostered by him, had fractured with his death.

“He didn’t mean it,” she said weakly. “He didn’t know Garcia was what he was. He thought he was helping out a friend.”

Jesse put a casual arm around her. “Look, in my experience, even nice vampires have it coming.”

It was talk. Charlie knew Jesse well enough to know that, but it didn’t stop her from lowering her magazine. “Do I have it coming?”

Jesse opened and shut her mouth several times before grimacing and turning away. “You feel bad about it. Most don’t.”

“Doesn’t mean I’ve done anything about it.”

“There’s nothing to do. He’s dead.”

Charlie sighed and shut her eyes. “His coterie isn’t. His guys. Jack said some of them came to Silver Lake. Rhys…”

Her sire. She had only met him the once and had tried to hit him. A skinny kid, not much older than her, with shaggy sandy hair and a wisp of blonde mustache. He had killed her, turned her, ruined her life and Bella’s. And now she had taken everything from him. Maybe karma did exist.

Charlie threw down the magazine.

Jesse gave her a look. “Where you going?”

Jesse followed her out her bedroom and into the elevator.

“Going to see if Rhys is in Blue. If not, I guess I’ll ask around.” The idea didn’t exactly fill Charlie with a lot of confidence. They had kept the Professor’s death pretty tight under wraps. No one could know. Vampires were vengeful beasts. Chances were Rhys wanted to see or hear from her as much as she did.

“Who’s Rhys?” asked Jesse.

“My sire,” she admitted. “Don’t really know why he did it. The Professor said he didn’t have any good reason.”

“Anyone that makes more of us has got it coming,” said Jesse with a sniff.

Charlie smiled. Everyone had it coming, according to Jesse.

The elevator opened into Blue’s basement. It wasn’t excitable, but it wasn’t empty. Rubio talked with Midnight and some boys that might’ve been the Reapers. Blake flirted charmingly with Alice Zhao, who leaned over the bar in spite of herself. 

And a guy sat in the corner, with a book and a pint of snake beer, clearly not his first. Charlie didn’t understand why she hadn’t noticed him before. Maybe Obfuscate, maybe she just didn’t want to see. Vampires couldn’t lose weight and Rhys was basically skeletal as is, but his face felt drawn and gaunt, his eyes haunted and hung low.

“Jess,” said Charlie, swallowing hard, “I think I should talk to him alone.”

“I think you shouldn’t do anything stupid.” When Charlie gave her a tired look, Jesse grumbled. “I’ll go back upstairs but I’ll be listening through the shadows.”

Charlie approached the table. Rhys glanced up from his book and tensed. He shoved it into a messenger bag.

“Look, I’m not here to cause trouble,” he said. “I get it, you’re pissed, you’re right to be—”

“I am,” said Charlie simply. She sat. Rhys stood. “But, you looked like you could use the company.”

Slowly, Rhys sat again. “Why would you care?” he asked, but it sounded like he wanted her to.

“Because we’ve all in the same boat,” said Charlie. It was something Zari had said to Jesse and Charlie herself, more than once. “And, before the storm comes for us, I’d rather square things, not have enemies that aren’t enemies.”

Rhys gnawed on his lip. “The Cam’s coming, aren’t they?”

“Maybe.” Charlie didn’t want to think of the Ivory Tower. “Not tonight. What’re you reading?”

Rhys took out the book again. Hard cover, incredibly thick, and textured like fake leather with a golden lock. Gold script emblazoned the top,  _ Dungeons & Dragons: Player’s Handbook _ . “I was thinking of making a new character,” he said, abashed.

“Cool,” said Charlie genuinely. “I never got into D&D.”

“We used to have a group.” A shy smile turned up his lips, then was gone as soon as it came. His thin shoulders shrunk even more, like the words weighed on him. “Like, my gang. Math Class, we played three, four nights a week. Pretty much all we did.”

“Why’d the gang break up?” asked Charlie. The lie came out sharp.

Rhys turned the massive book open to a page about magic. “We — uh — Our leader died. We went our separate ways. Corin and Uke paired off, wanted to go to Seattle. I think Dogface is somewhere around here, but he went back to his clan — Nos.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. More surprisingly, she meant it. She hadn’t thought much about what would’ve happened once she killed the Professor.

Rhys nodded. “The Prof was a good guy. Always looking out for our kind.” Breath rattled through his lungs. “He did this, you know.” He gestured to Blue Moon. “For anyone, not just those in UCLA. Any lick who had nowhere to go could live with us, long as they wanted. Prof’d feed them, teach them, help them out however he could. Tame their Beasts. Sometimes, they’d leave. Sometimes they didn’t.” That sad smile flickered back. “He was a great DM, like, Dungeon Master, it’s a—”

“I know what D&D is,” said Charlie softly. “I’m really sorry.”

“He liked telling stories.” Rhys chuckled. “He did all the stupid little voices, let us work our Beasts out in an RPG rather than in the streets. I… wasn’t a good sort before I met him.” He leaned backwards and slid his hands down his face. “I’m sorry, girl,” he muttered to himself. “She’s my childe, this isn’t…”

“He sounded like a — like a really good man,” said Charlie. She shook her head. “You don’t need to apologize.”

“You’re right.” He sniffed and plastered a crude smile on his face. “So. Delilah’s hosting a house party, up in the hills. There’ll be coke blood and some actresses the Swans borrowed as dolls for the night. Wanna hit it up?”

Nothing sounded less appealing than that party. “You know, I like Ashley,” she forced out. “Him and his kids are… great.”

“I’m kidding,” said Rhys with a mad grin. “God.”

He laughed and Charlie joined in. It melted some of the tension between them.

“How many people do you need to play D&D?” she asked.

Rhys shrugged, still smiling. “We had five, six sometimes.”

“Jack might be interested,” she offered. “Jack Shen, he’s part of Monroe’s gang, too.”

“I know him. Maybe.” Rhys flipped through the book, to the start of a chapter entitled  _ Character Creation _ . He lugged another, less colossal book from his bag, this one featured a very pale-looking king on a throne. “I’ve always wanted to run  _ Curse of Strahd _ ,” said Rhys. “It’s a campaign about Count Strahd von Zarovich in Barovia. He’s basically Hardestadt, really—”

“Who?”

Rhys gave her a funny look. “I thought Monroe was teaching you.”

“I don’t exactly have an encyclopedia.”

Rhys scoffed. “Well, Hardestadt founded the Camarilla, like, five hundred years ago and has been the lord of Germany since… like, the Goths were tribes that sacked Rome and not losers in too much eyeliner.”

“And you get to kill this count in the story?” she asked.

“Exactly! It’s basically Anarch-certified.” He turned through the pages with a wild grin. Loose papers shifted out. “I’ve been trying to homebrew it for vampire players — it’ll be…” He sighed, brow drawing in grief as he surely thought of the Professor. “It was gonna be perfect.”

Rhys wasn’t that bad of a guy, Charlie considered. He took out a pen and started scribbling, as though she weren’t there, but she knew he would be disturbed if she left. It only helped to enhance her guilt. She shouldn’t be guilty. Rhys had killed her. He had stalked her, decided to kill her, and then sired her. She could say he was responsible for her becoming a murderer, but that was her own fault.

Rhys glanced up and she knew he saw the regret in her. “You would’ve liked him,” he said. “He told me you visited once. Should’ve stayed.”

Stayed. Would Bella never have been kidnapped if she had? Charlie wasn’t so delusional as to think she could still be with her sister as a vampire, but maybe she could’ve bought more time. Could’ve made peace with Rhys, joined their D&D group, never would’ve been wrapped up with Monroe and Garcia and hunters and God knew what else was coming.

“I would’ve killed you,” she said honestly.

“I’m a delicate flower,” he said with a smile. “Dogface would’ve fought you well, though.” He glanced with distaste towards Blake, then Rubio and the Reapers. “Let’s head out. Try to find some fun.”

He packed up his stuff and stood. Charlie followed him.

“What about your D&D stuff?” she asked.

“Don’t even have a group,” he said shortly.

Charlie’s phone vibrated as they left Blue Moon. Jesse texted her.

_ Where you going? _

Charlie asked Rhys, who shrugged. “Hoping to go down south. Maybe a little harmless burglary.”

Charlie told Jesse, who sent her a sarcastic smiley emote and an enthusiastic  _ Have fun!!! _

“How harmless are we talking?” asked Charlie.

Rhys entered an old beige car that looked like it came from the sixties. Long and boxy with a stripe of laminate wood. He stuck his head out the window. The steering wheel looked like a wheel. The image was so ridiculous Charlie couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

Rhys honked. “Like my ride?”

“It’s awful. I love it.”

“Get in, kid, we’re going robbing.”

Charlie did without a second thought. The vehicle felt like it was held together with duct tape and spit. On the freeway, it rattled threateningly. The car came equipped with a cassette and CD player, which spew some eighties pop she hadn’t heard of.

“Who are you going to rob?” she asked.

“ _ We _ —” he cocked his head to her “—are going to rob Fred.”

“Fred.”

“Yes, Fred.”

“Fred the Vampire?”

“Uh-huh.” 

“What’s Fred done?”

“Eh, not much. He’s a dirtbag, though, and was at UCLA. When we split, he took some stuff from me. I want it back.” 

Charlie was about to argue against stealing, but it wasn’t like they could call LAPD on some vampire who stole from another vampire. She had learned generally there was a lot of — very bad — self-policing, more like a bunch of stranded brats on a desert island than any kind of law.

“Alright,” she said. “Where does he live?”

“Down by Disneyland,” said Rhys. “He’s couch-surfing on some pretty rich couches.”

Charlie shifted and grumbled at that. Zari had a lot of bad shit to say about Louis Fortier, the Baron of Anaheim, who had been Embraced when slavery was big. As far as powerful old vampires went in LA, he was up there with Monroe. Maybe higher, she didn’t know.

“What’d he steal off you?” she asked.

“Models,” he said, “and not the fashion kind. It’s a D&D thing, like, little sculptures of characters. Took me a decade to paint them all properly.”

Charlie frowned. “Why’d he take them?”

Rhys snorted. “Him and I didn’t exactly get on. So long as the Prof was around, we didn’t do anything other than snap fangs. Licked me once he was gone, though.” Anger glinted in his eye and he ruffled his shaggy sandy hair again.

“That why you came to Silver Lake?”

“No,” he said. He turned to Charlie with a wan smile. “Had some unfinished business.”

“Me?” Charlie stared.

“’Course. Prof used to nag on me to pull on my big boy shoes and do you right. Said it wasn’t fair.”

Charlie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Nothing’s fair.”

Rhys thumped the steering wheel. His wrist bones stuck out against papery skin. “Exactly,” he said. “Nothing’s fair, but sometimes, we can make it fair. Prof liked to say that the world was cruel, but only because people made it cruel. It didn’t have to be that way.”

The more he said about the Professor, the more Charlie sunk into her seat. “Sounds like a wise man,” she said.

The car whizzed by Downtown, continuing south, following the signs toward Disneyland. To any LA native, it was a familiar drive. Charlie had gone once a year with her mom, then a month ago with Jack and some of his friends from Downtown, until she learned about Fortier. Nothing changed but, as they slipped from the neutral ground of the freeways and into Fortier’s domain, Charlie felt eyes on them. Everywhere and nowhere. The paranoia settled into her bones.

“I should’ve stopped you from going to the last Greystone Rant,” said Rhys grimly. “Too dangerous, could’ve gotten you killed easy.” He drove like any other vampire Charlie had met. That was to say, too fast and with not enough attention paid to road laws.

“You’re my sire. Not my dad.”

Rhys snorted. “As far as licks are concerned, I should be.”

“Then, you’re a deadbeat.” It was a joke, but he winced.

The car slid into a nicer neighbourhood. Very nice. Huge houses of some kind of revival architecture style or another: Grecian, Victorian, French. The lawns were trimmed too short, rich like living carpets, stretching small parks between houses. Fred’s couch-surfing.

Rhys took a deep breath in. “Feel that, kid?”

“Feel what?” She shrugged.

“Lean into your intuition,” he encouraged. “The Cobweb—”

“The Professor told me that you turned me because the Cobweb told you to,” snapped Charlie. It felt like a violation for him to mention it, despite having just as much access to the curse as any other Malkavian.

Rhys pulled over to park on the street and shut off the engine. “I’m not talking about that,” he said in a small voice. “Maybe I’ll tell you why, one night, but that’s not tonight. What’s the Cobweb telling you?”

Charlie shrugged again. She had a difficult time peeling away the Cobweb from her own thoughts and feelings. Like most of the time, they were basically one and the same. “We’re being watched,” she said at last. The obvious, unnecessary paranoia embarrassed her.

“Good job,” said Rhys proudly. “We  _ are _ being watched. Now, from where?”

“Everywhere?” she suggested.

He grinned. It only served to unnerve her further. They  _ were _ being watched, followed, stalked in the night like prey. Whispers echoed from the backseat and she whipped around. Nothing. Shadows peeled away from the long reaches of trees and shrubs. She blinked. They vanished. Blinked again. Came closer.

Rhys raised a finger. “And, who is everywhere around us?”

“Lasombra?” she suggested wildly.

“Uh, no.” Rhys wrinkled his nose. “I think your gang’s got the only one in town. Try again.”

“You sure that’s not real?” she asked, voice creeping to the shrill.

Rhys glanced and shook his head. “Nah. So, who’s watching us?”

“Fortier,” she realised. “This is his land.”

“Exactly,” he said. “Fortier has the same right as every baron. He can employ ghouls, humans, licks, and surveille his land like Big Brother, but —  _ but _ he does. Most Malkavians know that. The Web’s warning you what we all know, that’s all. Nos started up SchrekNET to join up their clan knowledge. We don’t need that bullshit.”

Charlie collected herself. The paranoia having a genuine target helped. Not much, but the sense of it relaxed her. It wasn’t paranoia if it was right.

“Ready to rob Freddie?” asked Rhys. He leaned into the back and grabbed his messenger bag and a pistol.

She stepped out. The door creaked as it shut. The streets shone like silver with new rain and moonlight. Streetlights puddled yellow-gold light every twenty feet. They felt like the only two people in the world. Rhys put the gun down the front of his pants and offered her a hand.

“No,” she said, confused. She shook her head.

“Come on, it’ll be literally twenty minutes.” He took his gun back in hand. “Licks can grow back kneecaps.”

Charlie shook her head again. This was a stupid idea. It wasn’t the Cobweb but her who stopped. She leaned across the car at him. “I’m staying here. Have fun.”

Rhys grumbled. “Why? It’s no fun breaking in by myself.”

“I know nothing about Fred,” she said pointedly. “What’s his clan? His age? His sire?”

She took another look at the neighbourhood. Exceptionally nice, wealthy. It wasn’t the type of place most Anarchs would live in, aside from maybe Monroe or Ashley. Ventrue or Toreador. The Camarilla high clans. Fortier was Ventrue, too, with plantation wealth going back centuries.

“Who lives there?” she demanded.

Rhys shrugged. “Some rich mortal. Who knows. Someone Fred’s fanging.”

Charlie took out her phone and dialed a number. As it rang, she asked Rhys, “What street are we on?”

He leaned over to read the crossing. “South Lakeview.”

It rang a few more times before Zari picked up. “Charlie, what’s up?”

“Nothing much,” she said, staring at Rhys. “I’m out on the town, causing trouble. Some lick wants to break into 432 South Lakeview—”

“You get the fuck out there, right now, girl,” demanded Zari. “You come home  _ now _ .”

“I’m right, aren’t I?” she asked.

Rhys dropped his gun and applauded slowly, lonely hands in the night. “Well done, kid. Well fucking done.”

“If you break into Fortier’s, that’s coming down on all of Silver Lake,” said Zari urgently. “We don’t need to be starting an Anarch turf war right now.”

“Thanks,” said Charlie. “That’s all I wanted to know. Have a good night. Catch you later.”

Zari spoke to someone else. “Monroe wants to know who tried to get you to break into Fortier’s.”

Charlie pressed the phone to her shoulder and spoke to Rhys. “You’re in trouble with my stepdad,” she said with an unfortunate smile.

“I ain’t scared of the Vent,” scoffed Rhys, laughing.

“My sire, Rhys Wilson.”

Zari groaned. “Don’t let that nutcase get you in trouble.”

“I won’t.” Charlie hung up, only a little insulted. After all, she was Malkavian too, and she thought she was pretty stable. Rhys seemed alright.

“Very proud of you,” said Rhys with a beaming thousand watt smile of crooked teeth. “Kid, for an infant, you got some smarts in that head, it’s not all dust and Cobweb.” He got back into the car. “Was worried the Vent would turn you into his trust fund brat.”

“The fuck was that all about?” she demanded. She bristled at the truth in the insult.

Rhys started the car and drove up on Fortier’s lawn to turn around. “You might’ve heard our clan’s rep — crazy, dangerous, pranksters — none of it and all of it is true. Cobweb is, for as much as it’s misunderstood, and there’s a clan tradition of… ironic teachings. Like, Loki.”

“Getting me killed by Fortier would be a teaching?”

Rhys scoffed. “Nah, you wouldn’t be  _ killed _ . All that would happen would be your stepdad and Fortier talking, Vent to Vent, and settle some gentle thievery of some neonates gone wrong.” He raised a finger and took a breath. “But, you would learn your lesson.”

“Which would be?”

“Doublecheck your information for yourself, before you make decisions,” he said.

Good lesson, even if it did come a roundabout way. In spite of herself, she felt proud for passing Rhys’s little fable. 

Charlie had to smile. She snorted.

Rhys smiled to match. “What’re you thinking about?”

“Fred the Vampire.”

“Hey, you believed it for a while.”

He dropped Charlie back off at Blue Moon, but didn’t come back in. Something about looking for another group to play D&D with, that he’d save her a place. He skidded away, burning rubber on the road as he turned the corner. Freaky dude.

Feeling marginally better about herself, she called Monroe and asked for a meeting in his office. Disturbed by her request, he promised to come at once. At once. She didn’t know where he came from, but it was pretty fast — if not “at once”. The concern on his face was almost funny when he exited the elevator and found her sitting on his pristine desk. Maybe it wasn’t funny. It was a third face, one she didn’t see often, and didn’t know how she felt about it.

“What happened? Did Rhys Wilson do something?”

Charlie shook her head. “I want a job.”

Monroe started and the urgent concern crumpled on his face. “A… job? Charlie, you are dead. In another decade, it’ll probably be safe to get you a fake identity and then, if you want, you can work night shifts wherever.”

She sighed. She didn’t want to say it. It felt embarrassing coming out. “I don’t want to be a trust fund brat,” she said. “I don’t have much upkeep, but I wanna earn it.”

Monroe crossed the room and braced himself against the desk next to her. “You really shouldn’t bother yourself with what others say about you,” he said.

“Where does that money come from? Can’t be good, right? What sort of legal work can we do when we’re dead a century and a half?” Charlie didn’t want to say it, but she was thinking of Ashley and the first time she met him, when he passed an envelope full of cash to Monroe. Taxes for his drug dealing.

Monroe sighed and crossed back to the elevator. He took out a key and locked it. “It  _ is _ a trust fund,” he said heavily. “I started it shortly after my Embrace. The executives of it believe it passes through a mortal family — the Chicago-native Greengrasses — of which, Daniel Greengrass, I am the latest beneficiary of. Poor Daniel is ninety, a widower, with one son. It has a good sum of cash, but is mostly assets. Stocks, long-term investments, some real estate. Occasionally, Daniel deposits some profits from his cousin’s music venue, Blue Moon. This, of course,  _ is _ illegal, because the Greengrasses have never existed. But I’m hardly the mafia. I even pay taxes on it. It is as close to above board as we can get.”

Charlie thought that over and didn’t like it. “You take Ashley’s drug money.”

“No,” he said at once. “Ashley Swan is someone who has been moving in criminal circles since Prohibition. He understands numbers, profit, and would never listen to my orders of his business if I was a curmudgeon overlord and not a partner.”

“No Brujah on PCP,” she remembered.

Monroe smiled thinly. “Exactly. I have a blacklist of what I don’t want him moving in Silver Lake. Unless it’s a distributor, he can’t sell enough to OD a single person. I get thirty-percent profit of what he does explicitly in Blue Moon. In return, I let my accountant wash ten million a year for him.”

“Ten — Ten  _ million _ ?”

“Minus taxes,” he added thoughtlessly.

Charlie gaped, gesturing wildly. “That’s a  _ lot _ of money. Ten million from, what, preying on addiction and suffering? I get I drink blood, but, come on, man.” She looked at him desperately.

Monroe didn’t crack. “Alliances are not moral endorsements, but chess moves. I cannot have him against me and, so, it is safer to keep us on the same side. If not me, another would take my place.”

Charlie crossed her legs on the desk and folded her arms. “What can I do, work-wise, that doesn’t involve a shitload of illegal crap?”

He blanked.

“Really?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“You can’t work with the public, bartending or waitressing, in case a human recognises you,” he said sensibly. “If you don’t want to learn how to launder money—”

“Don’t you need, like, an assistant or something?” asked Charlie. “Like Hawthorne.”

He took a moment to collect himself. “She’s back,” he said lightly. “I’m surprised word hasn’t spread already. Kindred do gossip.”

Charlie tried to gauge his reaction. “That’s good?”

Monroe nodded distantly, but she got the impression it was not very good. Something came to him and he got that look. “Actually, I could use your help with something else,” he said. “How do you feel about conflict resolution?”

Charlie snorted. “That’s a job, now?”

“I have security at Blue Moon, but, even then, they’re only ghouls. They won’t take care of conflicts that could arise between other gangs.” At her blank look, he continued, “Stealing, arguing, disturbing the peace, using Disciplines. De-escalate or throw them out.”

Monroe’s phone rang. He answered it and turned from her. “What is it?” he asked.

Charlie slipped down from his desk. It wasn’t a bad idea, really. Even sounded important, in a way. Just make everyone get along. Vampire timeout. Playing mommy to a few dozen vampires who thought snapping fangs and shooting each other was hella good time.

He hung up. “Sorry about that.”

“Something your new assistant can help you with?” she asked sarcastically.

Monroe softened. “Actually, that was an agent I’ve had watching Bella. She’s fine,” he added as her face and heart fell. “She’s safe. She’s returning to school in the new year and her therapist has made strides in helping her adjust.”

“You’re following her?” asked Charlie, torn between outrage and the comforting feeling of knowing her sister was okay.

“Yes,” he said, “and I wouldn’t advise taking eyes off her, especially as our world is becoming increasingly unstable. Garcia didn’t invent the idea of kidnapping human family, after all.”

Charlie covered her mouth and turned away, struggling to contain the flash of memories his words brought up. Monroe lay a hand on her shoulder.

“I told you, I am on your side,” he said. “Regardless what comes, what happens, I am here for you.”

She couldn’t cry, didn’t need to, but still took comfort. His words echoed in her ears and, then, the night didn’t seem nearly so dark and threatening. Her sire was a nutjob, ready to get her in heaps of trouble for a laugh. Slimy princes came out of the woodwork and LA was held together with duct tape, a lick, and a prayer. But she had one person on her side. 

“I’ll play peacekeeper here,” she sniffed. “But I want a wage. No more black credit cards.”

“We can work something out,” said Monroe awkwardly. 


	10. All In

Zari went through the motions but with not even half her usual gusto. She made her steady appearance at Blue Moon — in the basement, curled in the corner armchair with a laptop. She bantered away Blake’s flirtations, took vessels in the Hollywood clubs, and weathered Aisha’s  _ ceaseless _ complaining.

Sure, I drink blood but I’m not some movie monster. I’m going home.

You interact with tons of humans! Why can’t Noel come round?

I have nothing to do all night. I’m so bored.

“I’ve lost everything —  _ everything _ — the least you can do is have a bit of compassion.”

Zari blinked and glanced up, torn from her thoughts. Aisha paced back and forth in the early evening emptiness of the basement, hands wringing frantically. Zari didn’t indulge this bitching. It was a phase, she knew, and one Aisha would tire of soon enough. Soon enough couldn’t come soon enough.

“I do have compassion,” said Zari sensibly. “But, the Tower’s coming and we need to lie low. Remember, when I got turned, I left, dropped my last name, so that no one could come—”

“ _ But they did _ !” Aisha exploded. She rounded on her, eyes shining wetly. The Deathsingers in the corner turned to stare. “They kidnapped me right off the street, in front of my house, and held me for  _ days  _ — hungry, bleeding, not knowing if I was ever gonna see the boys or the sun again. And now, the answer’s just, ‘no’?”

“Don’t you dare blame me for your Embrace,” said Zari dangerously.

“You just locked us out of your life and threw away the key, like we never existed,” said Aisha. Her lips trembled. “Noel was too young, but I still have memories of you. And you just… left.”

Zari took a deep calming breath. Every word was a dagger that glanced off her armor. She needed to harden. She glared at the Deathsingers, who did their best to pretend they couldn’t hear.

“What do you want from me?” she demanded. “An apology? Want me to rock you to bed at dawn and kiss your boo-boos? That ain’t happening.”

Aisha stumbled back like she had hit her. “I—”

“I could’ve left you to rot with Garcia, or had Monroe turn you out to the wastelands—”

“Are you saying I should be grateful you didn’t try to kill me?” asked Aisha in disbelief.

“I want you to recognise what you’ve got, rather than what you’ve lost. Because you are never getting that back. You go and crack the Masq for your family, Monroe will be cleaning it up and—”

Speak of the devil. Zari sucked at her fangs. Monroe read the room and retreated back to the elevator.

“No, come on,” Zari called. “Let’s do this now.”

Monroe raised an eyebrow but sat next to her on the couch. He spared a look for Aisha, who glowered, then turned on her heel and stormed upstairs. “Should I be worried?” he asked Zari.

Zari sighed and snapped her laptop shut — gingerly. Last time she had done that in anger, the screen had cracked and been a bitch to get fixed at night. She needed to make another ghoul. Typically, she gave them to Ashley, who always paid her well for them — favours, mostly. In his current mood, she could probably just use Ashley as a ghoul.

“No,” she said at last. “I’m — Life’s just given me a lot to think about. I don’t even know if I should mock up January’s issue.”

Monroe furrowed his brow as he considered it. “I think you should,” he said, “for your own sake, if no one else’s. Times will be tough, but we need to continue to indulge in what few harmless pleasures we have.”

“How harmless could it be?” asked Zari softly. She glanced furtively at the Deathsingers and lowered her voice further. 

“Unless you explicitly use  _ The Fifth Estate _ to rally Anarch sentiment against the Tower, they won’t take issue with it.”

Zari searched him. “You’ve been thinking about the Tower coming.”

“I’m hoping to stay independent,” he said.

His words chilled her blood.

“You’re gonna roll over and accept their rule? How did that meeting go at elysium?”

“No,” he said adamantly. His eyes flashed. “This is a conflict between the Anarchs and the Camarilla. I’m neither, and neither is Silver Lake.”

It seemed so simple to Zari. She stared at him like he was an idiot. “The Anarchs’ll never forgive you for that and the Cam will be happy you’re staying out of it.”

Monroe lowered his gaze to his hands.

“But you’ve already thought of that, too,” she realised. “What did that prince offer you?”

“There is nothing the Camarilla can offer me,” he said with such conviction that she almost believed it.

“What about autonomy? Wealth? Power? Respect? Back in your clan?”

“Nothing,” he swore. “And something else has come up. Can we finish this upstairs?”

Reluctantly, Zari followed him. He locked the elevator behind them. She hadn’t ever seen him do it before. Now, she had seen him do it twice in a week. His paranoia spooked her. Maybe it wasn’t even paranoia, but common sense. That was even worse.

“What’s come up?” she asked, fearing the answer.

“There’s a second prince,” he said heavily. “A Ventrue ancilla, come out of New York with too much vim and vigor. Sebastian LaCroix. He came quietly some time ago and has claimed Westside. Supposedly, Therese Voerman and him came to the mutual decision. They’re massing a court and council.”

Zari stared. “Jeanette is opening a nightclub in Hollywood with Ashley.”

Monroe furrowed his brow and collapsed into the chair behind his desk. “That’s… not good. It’ll give them an in.” As his blank thinking eyes glanced at her, she knew what he thought.

“It’s a good idea,” she said.

“It’s not.”

“If it’s an in for them, it’s an in for us. Doors open both ways. I’m…” It all slid together perfectly. The words spilled out of her. “I’m starting a high-stakes poker game with Ashley. I could invite Jeanette in as a partner. Ashley and I aren’t dumb enough to give her anything and, then, when she goes back to Westside—”

“Forget it,” he said firmly. “I’m not having a Toreador neonate spy for me in a Camarilla court.”

Zari snapped back, stunned at his fervor. “I’m not just some Toreador neonate.”

He sighed. “I know. That’s not what I meant.”

“Ashley would go for it,” she argued.

“Ashley does a lot of things I don’t agree with,” he said coolly.

“Things you don’t agree with, but still take advantage of.”

Monroe couldn’t argue against that. He sat back, silent and disturbed at being faced with a truth he preferred to ignore. “I can’t protect you there,” he said. “You will be intensely vulnerable and it’s not like our partnership is secret. It’ll be suspect.”

She raised an eyebrow and he sighed, wounded.

“Everyone knows I’m Ashley’s childe,” said Zari. She swallowed the emotions that bubbled at that hurt look on his face. “I don’t know if it’s gossip yet, that we’re back together, but all I need to do is sever public ties and I’ll be the perfect spy.”

“What about your daughter?” asked Monroe quietly. “Are you taking her with you into that viper’s nest?”

Zari bristled. “That’s my business, not yours.”

Monroe lost his smile and that look returned to him, like he was trying to puzzle people out. “I’m sorry for your difficulties with your daughter,” he said. “My offer still stands.”

His offer. His offer to foster Aisha himself. Zari knew that as long as she clung to her pride, Aisha would slide closer to the Swans. In the greater scheme, there were far worse fates. The three of them could be kind, fun-loving, and infectious company. To their credit, they had done their best to not involve Aisha in their bloodier nights of debauchery, but it was Ashley’s accredited method of boiling frogs. The temperature always rose.

Zari couldn’t say it, didn’t even want to hear it herself, but maybe Ashley was right. The time had passed for her to be a mother or even a sire to her daughter. Some wounds were too deep. Maybe time could heal them. Zari doubted it. In time, all that would be left would be an Aisha that bore no resemblance to her daughter, as surely as Zari bore no resemblance to the mother Aisha once knew.

Look ahead. Never back.

“Thank you, but no,” she said frostily. “I will deal with Aisha. I will follow Jeanette to LaCroix. And I will bring them down. Good? Happy? Do you even have a plan to deal with this Westside Prince?”

Monroe tapped the desk. “I’ll figure it out.”

Satisfied, Zari nodded and returned to the elevator. “Make it known that you and I split.”

“Zari,” he called after her. “It’s locked.” He stood uncomfortably close to her as he unlocked it, his face dark and unreadable. “When you first came to me, I took you in because you were in need and I had the ability to meet that need. You’ve proven yourself more clever and sharp than I’m sure people are used to giving you credit for. Know… Please, know you can come back to me. I’ll miss you, my dear.”

Monroe was saying goodbye. The sincerity blindsided her and she stiffened herself against it, as good as it felt.

“Ditto,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything else.

The elevator came and she dodged the look in his eyes. Zari left in a hurry, not sparing Blue Moon a second look. She needed to find where Aisha ran off to. It wasn’t hard. Ashley liked powers he had no right to. One of his favourite was creating lodestones. He had the tracking pebbles sewn into his childer, in case of emergencies. Zari had cut hers out with a penknife years ago. He had readily supplied her one when she asked nicely and she dropped it into Aisha’s purse. It glowed in her vision on the horizon, directing her. For now, it was stationary.

Zari crawled into her Mercedes. Aisha was going to be in a world of hurt, running away like that  _ again _ . There were hunters, raider gangs in Angels, and worse. Humans and frenzy and, worst of all, her family.

She crossed further into the Angels Wasteland than she wanted to. But, the little red lodestone glowed. Further. Deeper, into Central LA. A hospital. The red cross sign at the top of the ten story building left no doubt. What was Aisha doing at a hospital? She parked at a meter and followed the lodestone’s dot, growing more angry and paranoid with every step.

Inside, the hospital spoke. Even at night, it was not silent. The fluorescents whined, stretched as thin as the worn staff. Darkness cloaked the empty kiosks and benches. The floors yawned as they sagged. On the fifth floor, medical machines beeped and wheezed pressurized air through tubing. Zari suppressed a shiver.

Aisha paced down a hall, wringing her hands behind her. She jumped when she spotted Zari. “Oh, fuck,” she groaned.

“Yes,” snapped Zari, keeping her head on a swivel for nurses. “Why the fuck did you leave Blue Moon? Did you not worry about—”

“Shh,” she pleaded. She cast a furtive look towards a particular door.

“What?” Zari demanded. “What? Who’s in there? Did you get a boyfriend I don’t know about?”

That was when Zari noticed Aisha had been crying. Her hands wrung around a tear-stained wad of napkins and she sniffled every time she drew breath to speak.

“What’s happened?” she asked, far kinder. “Just, tell me, baby.”

Aisha collapsed into Zari’s arms and continued to sob, gently, unable to stop. Bewildered, she stroked her back and soothed it.

“It’s alright, babe,” she whispered. “It’s okay. It’s just you and me—”

Aisha pulled back, bloody tears marring her face, and she fixed Zari with such a look of disgust that she actually took a step back. Aisha wrenched at the door. It swung open, heavy. A man lay in bed, a Black man, and, on first look, Zari thought she had been right and Aisha had a secret human boyfriend. Not the first fledgling, but easy enough to deal with. Then, she recognised the features, though she hadn’t seen them up close in decades. Wide nose, strong jaw, a close fade of coarse black hair.

Noel. Her son. Aisha’s little brother. The last time Zari had held him, he had been a toddler. A grown man, now, he had married and had two beautiful little boys. His eyes were shut and too still, though not dead.

“What… What’s wrong with him?” she asked in a strangled voice.

“Brain tumour,” said Aisha heavily. “He’s had it, like, six months. Came like a fucking whirlwind. He had a bad seizure last week and fell into a coma. Doctors say he’ll come out any day now.”

Zari reached a trembling hand to him. Noel didn’t respond when she held his hand. The warmth of hot blooded skin burned her. The cursed wound of leaving her family had scarred and scabbed over, ugly and painful when picked at, but buried. Aisha’s Embrace had forced her to confront it and now, Noel hurt more than she thought. She couldn’t run away from it to Westside, to throw herself into espionage like she had thrown herself into a zine. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she didn’t know whether she meant it for Noel or Aisha. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve been there.”

“You should’ve,” said Aisha in a small bitter voice. She lingered in the door. “That’s my boy more than he is yours. When you left—”

“I didn’t leave.”

“—Dad lost it. Dad’s not a mom. Guess who raised that boy. Who made him lunches for school and made sure he did his homework, got him to apply to UCA for accounting because he’d always have a job, who was his best woman at his wedding?” 

“There’s only so many times I can say that I’m sorry,” snapped Zari. The bitterness overwhelmed her.

“You never said that,” Aisha accused.

Zari stroked Noel’s hand. A lump rose in her throat. “Guess I thought it so much, I’d forgot I hadn’t said it.”

Aisha sat on the other side of Noel’s bed and bowed her head. In the silence, the air was thick and heavy with unspoken prayer, a hope against hope. Down other rooms, machines whirred and kept the sick alive.

“Can we do something?” asked Aisha. “As, vampires.”

“No.”

Aisha thought about that. “Is that a can’t or won’t?”

“It’s a no.”

Noel stirred. Aisha and Zari jerked up in hope. He sighed, then slipped back into the bed and into his coma.

“He’s got one more round of chemo,” said Aisha, teary again. “Then, he said, that’s it. He’s been through enough, but—”

“No.” Zari raised her head. “Aisha, I can’t let you curse him like this. That boy you raised is going to die in a hospital. What’s gonna rise won’t be him, anymore than I am your mother or you are you.”

Noel’s head turned to the side. His eyelids fluttered.

Zari stood. “Aisha, we need to go.”

Aisha stared at her. “What?”

“We’re both dead. He can’t know we were here.”

Reluctantly, Aisha came out into the hall and shut the door. “I was supposed to take his boys with his wife,” she said guiltily. “We were gonna move in and everything.”

Zari wrapped an arm around her and led them back out into the city. The night air was heavy, cold, and wet. The quiet felt like it judged her. She knew enough about vampires, young and old, to know that the Embrace wouldn’t save Noel from anything. It wasn’t resurrection. It was a shadow of a person, come back in the body of a predator — hungry, lean, mean.

But she couldn’t find the words.

Zari drove Aisha back to her house and left the engine idling. “You can go visit Noel, so long as he doesn’t see you, speak to you, or know you’re around.”

“What does it matter?” she asked, half to herself. “He’s gonna die anyway.”

“At the end, then.” The words chewed through her heart. Zari sighed. “You go, I have work to do.”

Aisha didn’t leave. “What? Does it have to do with the Swans?”

“Yeah. We’re starting a poker ring, down by the strip.”

Aisha snorted as she left. “Yeah, my mother the criminal.”

Zari didn’t feel like arguing. She knew that her husband, as well as Noel’s family, lived in Westside. That was a bridge she could burn when she got to it. Her nerves made her drive too fast and she arrived to Pandemonium in record time.

Rather than a light-filled oasis of blood and fun, it felt too loud, like a prison, clawing at iron bars. It bounced right off her and she was relieved to find Ashley in the back offices. It was painted an atrocious shade of Mountain Dew and its computer and fax machine were at least ten years old, but it was quiet. He spoke with Wu, the promoter and one of his many ghouls. Wu nodded animatedly to everything Ashley said, but Zari recognised that cruel bored look on Ashley’s s face. In the middle of agreeing, Ashley sliced open Wu’s neck with a nail, sharp as any fang or blade. Blood waterfalled out and Wu clutched his neck, gurgling wetly. Ashley played with the stream of blood, struck by the crimson beauty.

Ashley, then, noticed Zari in the door. He licked his finger clean. “What? I always hated that lickspittle. Close the door.”

Zari did as he asked and Ashley shoved the dying Wu out of the chair in front of the desk and sat. “I think you’ll be pleased with me,” he said with a glittering smile. “I’ve talked Ian, Wu’s subordinate and replacement, into hosting an illegal poker game here. I know, this was your idea, you probably wanted to do the negotiations, but Wu was a…” He trailed off and gave her a curious look.

“What?” she snapped.

He shrugged. “You haven’t given me shit about stealing your work, or killing him.”

“My mind’s wandering.”

“Wander it back,” he said sternly. “I’ve worked out three venues already—”

“What about Jeanette Voerman’s Lemonade Stand?” asked Zari with a feeble imitation of Ashley’s own cruel smile. She spared a look as Wu struggled to catch his breath, whistling as it did through his punctured windpipe. Talking business with Ashley over a dying man invoked old memories. Ones she didn’t like. She couldn’t pinpoint the moment when it stopped bothering her, but she felt nothing but distant pity for the man.

“Ah. She told you.” Ashley leaned forward and tossed his sunglasses on the desk. “I don’t know about that anymore. Her sister is in bed with a new prince in Westside.”

Zari raised an eyebrow. “Exactly. We let Jeanette in as a partner, host a game in the Stand, give her a cut, and then—”

“What?” Ashley laughed. “Join the Camarilla? I would rather go into partnership with the sun.”

“Take him down from the inside,” she said simply.

Ashley stilled and his unblinking eyes pierced her. “I’ve heard this Westside Prince doesn’t have a lot going for him, in terms of allies.”

“ ‘Make yourself useful’, isn’t that what you always taught me?” she asked innocently. “I’m not saying we give him the Sons. I’ll just let it be known that I can do what you can do.”

“This is Monroe’s idea,” he said coolly.

Zari sat on the desk in front of him. “Actually, he was against it. I pitched it to him as my spying for him and he argued. I still don’t think he believes I’ll do it.”

Ashley, who scarcely ever retracted his fangs, let them grind against his front teeth as he thought. “You will be alone among enemies,” he said at last. “I can’t go with you. Monroe won’t want to give me that much leash.”

Zari snorted. “Since when do you run at his beck and call? This is a good idea, Ash—”

“Since he fed me his blood.”

Zari stared, but Ashley met her eye with a small, even smirk. As long as Zari had known him, Ashley had fed primarily off his own childer. His own affairs with other licks were common gossip. Rumour had it he had bedded Garcia back in the day, and Garcia had never forgiven him for it. Ashley could be many things, but sloppy was not one of them. He wouldn’t risk bonding himself to someone he trusted only with one night of vitae-dripping sex, or even his childer who, Velvet Velour had shown, could leave. Zari always suspected he was bonded to another. Monroe was an idiot for not putting the pieces together.

“He thinks he’s bonded you,” said Zari in wonder. “Fucking hell.”

Ashley reached out a hand and squeezed her knee. “He’s Ventrue and only out of the Camarilla three years. I figured he’d get on a power trip and I was right.”

“You’re testing him,” she figured.

He nodded. “So far, he hasn’t abused it. But if he tries to make it a full bond or ues me as a lapdog, I’m gonna take you and the kids and we’re going to New Orleans.”

Zari couldn’t believe it. She wouldn’t believe that Monroe was like that, but, then again, five minutes ago she wouldn’t have believed he would’ve tried to enslave Ashley.

Slowly, she nodded. “Aisha, too.”

“Of course,” he said graciously. “I’ll help you with this Westside Prince. I’ll even take care of your girl. But you be ready to go when I say the word. Hey, look at me.”

His voice was so serious, so gentle, so unlike Ashley that Zari couldn’t resist it. She analyzed her heart closely for Presence, but found none. He stood and cupped her face with his hands, turning it to face him.

“When this city turns to shit, I’m gonna make sure you survive it,” he whispered. “You don’t need to like me, but you need to face that you’re important to me and always have been.”

“Why?” Her skin tingled where he touched her. His thumbs stroked her cheeks. Zari forgot to breathe.

Ashley smiled. “We’re family, girl.”

The word broke the spell he had over her. She thought of Noel, lying in the hospital bed, his wife, Charice, at their home with his two boys, facing widowhood as a young woman, a single mother who lost her sister-in-law who had promised to help her. Her husband, who had lost his wife, his daughter, and now his son. The last Thanksgiving they had all been together at, as Zari had spied from a dark cold car parked across the street.

Zari almost told Ashley, longed to shake off the burden of her human family, but the weight would not leave her. Instead, she buried the feelings, and pulled Ashley closer. His lips met hers, soft and cool and familiar, and he kissed her fiercely as she began to cry. His fangs scored her lip with a flash of pain, fear, and pleasure. The contact of his skin overwhelmed her with Presence, washing her mind clear and free.

She didn’t stop crying until him and his fangs slipped inside her. The feeling was intoxicating, better than feeding or fucking or drugs or alcohol. It was pure bliss, balanced perfectly. Presence counteracted the Beast’s terror of being preyed on, which only heightened her own erotica and the feel of his hands on her body. It could’ve lasted an eternity and still not been long enough. 

But everything had to come down, and Zari came to still sitting on the desk, her jeans crumpled on the floor. Ashley tucked himself away with the self-satisfied smirk that made her feel dirty.

“I’ve decided I’m going to be a gentleman,” he proclaimed, “and not ask you why you were sobbing. I know I’m not that bad.”

Zari blinked away the last tears and the residual feelings of the fanging began to fade. Her eyes caught Wu’s glassy ones. He stared up from the floor, pale and dead.

Ashley stroked her bare leg and kissed her cheek. “You’re still delicious, beautiful.” His lips crawled down her face, her jaw, and pressed against her neck where he bit her. When it became clear that distraction wouldn’t take her eyes or mind off Wu, he sighed. “What? I really don’t like this new you. All this too-good-for-you shit that Monroe’s infected you with.”

“I didn’t need Monroe to hate you,” she said coolly. “I had you to do that for me. You with your, ‘A night out without three deaths is a waste of time’ and getting college freshmen hooked on drugs to sell as vessels and prostitutes and fuck knows what else.”

He rolled his eyes. “They’re only human—”

“So was my daughter, my  _ son— _ ”

“And so were we. Do you have a point here?”

“Why did you kill Wu? He was going to do what you wanted.”

Ashley shrugged. “I wanted to. And I was going to use his corpse to shut down Lure, so I could sell it to Jeanette.”

Sensible. Reasonable. Everything Ashley did always sounded reasonable. Zari wondered, not for the first time, if he was old enough that a low-level Presence just leaked out of him. Wu’s blood soaked into the carpet.

“This is what we’ve always been, hasn’t it?” she asked hollowly.

He smiled. “You mean fanging in the back of a club over a fresh corpse? Yeah.”

Zari had buried too much tonight, and a piece of it leaked out.

“I’m scared,” she whispered.

Frowning, Ashley stepped between her legs and stroked her face. “Of what?”

He could be so gentle when he wanted to be. Zari leaned into the small kindness.

He followed her eyeline back to Wu and kissed her forehead. “Neonates shouldn’t sire,” he whispered. “It brings y’all too close to humans again. And we aren’t humans. Let me take care of Aisha. I’ll love her like my own, you know that.”

Zari shouldn’t. She shouldn’t. Not now. Not when Aisha  _ needed _ to be with her family, cling to her humanity until Noel passed. Zari knew how time would crawl to a standstill, the party that never ended, only jumping from the hills to the strip. Meeting Brad Pitt and Keanu Reeves, only to fang them. Drugs, murder, all so casual. Disposing bodies was just part of cleanup at dawn. And friends. Everyone was a friend. With Presence, everyone was a slave, eager to obey. The Swans the best friends of all. Family, like Ashley said. Humans were toys and sometimes it was more fun to break them than to play with them. Unlife was for living, for unbridled and unfettered joy, for blood and Presence and love, because there was no price that made unhappiness worth it.

With Monroe, Aisha would suffer. She would drift, face the darkness of eternity and know she was a monster. Charlie, even in the short time they had known her, had dimmed, darkened, hardened.

Zari nodded. “Thank you.”


	11. The Hollowmen

“Hell of a way to spend the nights before Christmas,” said Charlie with disbelief. She discreetly pocketed a few of the alchemy blood magic pills from the offered dish.

“We’ll have a party on the twenty-fifth,” promised Monroe. “Maybe celebrate Christmas another day.”

“You can’t do that to  _ Christmas _ ,” said Jack. There wasn’t the usual flippant argumentative tone in his voice, though. He knew what he should say, but he didn’t have the spirit behind it.

This evening, Blue Moon was more crowded than usual. Monroe paid the Deathsingers to do another set tonight. They agreed and passed the word around the domain: refugees from San Diego were coming in hot. Exciting. Fresh meat. And ex-Sabbat.

They left the venue by the back door. Three of them, supposed to be. Monroe, Jack, and Jesse. Between the three of them, Monroe’s mortal security team in the second car, and God knew what else, they hoped to enter LAX and make it through the Angels Wasteland in one piece.

Charlie knew that they heard her follow them.

Jack and Jesse entered the backdoor of the heavy armored SUV. It looked expensive, sleek and almost mirrored in its shine. It wasn’t their usual car, however. There was an extra row in there, to pick up their travelers.

Monroe stopped her. Rather than his standard blazer, he wore a loose black jacket and tactical vest. She noticed Jack and Jesse had been dressed similarly. 

“Stay here tonight,” said Monroe, but it wasn’t an order, only a suggestion. “Zari’s here. There will be music, excitement, Rubio, the thinbloods. Ashley won’t even be at Blue tonight.”

“I’m part of this, aren’t I?” she asked.

“You don’t need to be.” 

Monroe clicked open the back of the trunk. The armorment only made it more clear that they were going to war. Hand guns, shotguns, stacked boxes of ammo, a pair of swords, heavy fire axes, and a rack of bottles that Charlie mistook for beer before she noticed the rags hanging from them. Molotov cocktails. And were those grenades? Fire. Fire. Sun in hand form. Vampire delete buttons.

“You and Zari aren’t coming not because you aren’t important but because you are,” said Monroe firmly. “Neither of you have great skill in fighting or the Disciplines to do it.”

Charlie raised a middle finger and, as she did, faded to invisibility. “Between the three of you, who can do this?”

Monroe grimaced. “Why do you want to risk your life like this? It’s not your fight. It’s a boon I owe Orsay.”

Charlie returned to visibility and stuck her hands in her pockets. “Maybe I’m on your side, too.”

He considered her and his eyes softened. “You’re beginning to learn,” he said at last. “I will abide by your free choices and trust your judgement, but they must be informed.”

“I’m listening.”

Monroe shut the trunk. “You will do precisely what I say. You will not take any unnecessary risks. Do not split apart from the group, not once. Run away from anything you can’t handle. And I saw you sneak those pills. Swallow them.”

Charlie did, choking once before managing to get them down. They burst on the way down, bitter blood and alchemical toxins. “What do they do?”

“Telekinesis, weak though it is, it’ll be unexpected. Flight, but limited. Don’t use either of them unless you need to, I don’t need the rest of the city discovering alchemy pills.”

“Yes, sir, captain, mister.”

His face creaked into a smile that didn’t touch his serious eyes. He handed her a thick heavy pistol that she recognized as Raufoss. The incendiary rounds could kill vampires in one shot. “Get in the car.”

Jesse and Jack stared at her for a moment, but accepted her presence. Monroe slid behind the wheel and pulled out of Blue’s parking lot. They were quickly joined by two more conspicuous black SUVs.

Charlie kept a tight hand on the gun. Point and click. Fear churned in her, but she han’t made such a clear decision in a long time. It wasn’t Cobweb or instinct or intuition. She should be here because she had something to help. None of them could turn invisible. Even Jack wasn’t so good at it.

Jack transformed into a large black cougar, more panther-like than any normal California wildcat. He lay his head on his paws thoughtfully and shut his eyes.

Jesse was calm. Tense, stretched like a rubber band, but calm. “Do you know anything about this wasteland?” she asked Charlie.

“It’s what Anarchs call domains without barons,” she said. “Full of squabbing raider gangs, fighting over a block or two of territory. They’re all trying to become top dog but it’s more like crabs in a bucket.”

Jesse thought that over. The shadows pulsed gently, like some fancy lighting system, but it was only her own powers as a Lasombra. “Think they’ll attack the car?”

“Could,” said Charlie. “I’ve heard we can take bullets, though. Seen it.”

Charlie hadn’t taken the thinblood drugs before, though she had seen the others mess with it. It took a moment of squinting concentration, but the gun raised from her hand, levitating in front of her. She looked at the release. The magazine slid out, hovering next to it. Slammed back in. Safety off, and back on.

“I don’t trust that shit,” said Jesse, wrinkling her nose.

With a lazy smile, a piece of shadow pulled away like a tentacle from some unearthly lagoon. It ruffled through Jesse’s hair like a spare hand, then she handed it a quarter and it crushed the coin like a ball of tinfoil. Jack growled. The coin  _ plinked _ off his forehead.

Charlie stared, torn between horror and amazement. “Guess you don’t need any.”

Jesse winked and her eyes felt heavier as they lingered on Charlie.

Monroe clearly knew where he was going. The journey took twice as long as it should’ve, as he kept peeling away to side roads, crossing back and over the freeway in a dizzying mess of directions. Charlie didn’t recognise some parts — random strip malls and local schools — but she spotted when LAX appeared on street signs.

“Almost there,” announced Monroe with relief. “I think the early hour, more than anything, brought us safety.”

The procession pulled into the LAX parking garage. At this early evening hour, it was packed full of people coming and going and cars parked overnight. Charlie recognised Dawson, Monroe’s security man, as he stepped out and some more of the guys from Blue Moon. The other car idled, but no one left. Monroe tapped on the glass and had a quick word with the driver.

“Are we bringing guns into an airport?” asked Charlie, feeling stupid.

Not quite so stupid when Monroe considered it. “I think we’ll be fine without them. I want to get out of here without law enforcement attention.” 

“Sir, I am extremely capable—” started Dawson, the words clawing out of him.

“Yes, I know,” said Monroe irritably. Please, we’ll be fine. Just — yes, just stay here.”

Charlie left the gun in the car. The tinted windows were so dark no one could see inside. Jack lithely transformed from the black mountain lion into another form Charlie recognised. A furry bat. They knew from experience he could nestle in her pocket and take advantage of her invisibility. While not invisible, he did still sit on her shoulder. She gave him a pet and he mountaineered across her denim jacket to cling from her t-shirt. She zipped her jacket most of the way. He bulged it obviously, but it was less obvious than a prowling panther.

“Cute,” said Jesse with a snide smile.

Jack squeaked his indignities.

It was cute.

Charlie had been through LAX a few times, colossal airport that it was. Monroe seemed to know where he was headed, though, and Charlie and Jesse followed him. Almost seven o’clock, plenty of travelers caught evening flights or came in from around the world. Monroe ran a finger down the arrivals list.

“Did you ever fly?” Charlie asked Jesse.

She shook her head. “My family didn’t have time or money for stuff like that. You?”

“Went to Europe,” she admitted, suddenly awkward. “After high school. Did the backpacking, sight-seeing thing.”

“Sounds wonderful,” said Jesse bitterly. “Wish I could’ve seen it.”

“We do have eternity, theoretically,” said Charlie. A smile grew on her face. “I could show you this weird cafe in Milan. It’s so—”

“Word of advice,” interrupted Monroe, “don’t go to Milan. It’s a Sabbat city.”

“Sabbat are?” asked Jesse, irritated.

Monroe found their gate number and set off again. “A kindred sect. A deathcult revolving around Caine as our First. They make the Camarilla look like civilized humanitarians.”

They stopped in front of a specific gate, much quieter than the others. The flight from San Diego was on time, another half hour. The three of them settled themselves for their wait. Monroe sat next to Charlie — and Jack — as Jesse remained standing. The dark front desk had no attendant to listen in.

Monroe chewed on his words before spitting them in a whisper, “The gang we’re taking in, the Hollowmen, are former packmates of Orsay.”

“Meaning?” asked Charlie.

“Meaning that before they were Anarch, they were Sabbat. To her word, it’s been forty years. I’m hoping we will find cultured, if unorthodox kindred and not gory, bloodthirsty Cainites.”

Charlie heard his fangs slowly grind. The apprehension infected her like a parasite.

“What’re we going to do if they are?” she asked.

“Kill them,” said Jesse blandly.

Monroe glowered. “ _ Talk _ to them. I’ve never attempted to reform Sabbat, but four decades should’ve done much of the work.”

“You won’t be able to talk down monsters,” said Jesse. She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall.

“You’ve tried that, have you?”

“No. There’s no need. Some things you just don’t come back from. I think murder-deathcult leeches is probably one of them.”

Monroe leaned forward, his arms on his legs. His fierce look only intensified. “I think you need to take a long, hard look in a mirror, Miss Harper,” he said in a low voice. “Eternity exists for repentance and second chances.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked sharply.

“I mean for you to think on what I’ve said. That’s all.”

“I’ve come out — through a leech-infested, dangerous wasteland — to help  _ you _ smuggle some more dangerous leeches into your city,” she snapped. “The least I’m owed is some respect.”

“I do respect you. Immensely. Given what you’ve spent the last decade doing, I don’t trust you.” Monroe stood and gestured back the way they came. “I do not lock doors. You are not a prisoner, leave if you want, but if you do want a life along your own kind—”

The darkness behind the gate desk lashed out with a crack. A crack like a whip. It caught Monroe by the neck and yanked him to the ground.

The bat scrambled out of her jacket and flew at Jesse’s face, turning even as it flew into a large crow, clawed feet extended. Jesse swatted him. The darkness grew and deepened again.

“Stop,” cried Charlie.

Jesse glanced to Charlie and the look was utterly terrifying. Her face twisted in pure hatred, her eyes blackening, her aura, already streaked with black, became abyssal. Then, it was gone. So fast Charlie couldn’t be sure she had seen that monstrous look. Jesse snarled and released the whip around Monroe.

Charlie offered her hand and Monroe took it to stand. He rubbed his throat, but did not return Jesse’s anger. Instead, he met it with an indifferent calm, as though they had argued over whether it would rain tomorrow night. It felt worse than if he yelled.

“This is not this place for that argument,” said Monroe. “I admit, I started it, but I will end it.”

“Of course,” scoffed Jesse, “because  _ you’ve _ said what you wanted to.”

Jack stepped out from behind the empty desk on two legs. “Plane’s landed,” he said sullenly. “We’re gonna have company.”

Monroe and Jesse shared one more black look, before settling back along the wall. It took several minutes for the plane from San Diego to taxi over, pull across the tunnel, and unload everyone’s luggage. Charlie wondered how they would even recognise the vampires. She didn’t have to wonder long. Vampires waited for nothing and no one. Clearly, the first group were the Hollowmen.

A Hispanic woman pushed a woman who might’ve been her sister in a wheelchair up the ramp, while a heavyset man with grey skin came up behind them. They had a look not unlike Orion of the Reapers, like their eyes had seen a lot and didn’t give a damn what else they saw. Monroe might be eerie, when he forgot to blink or became too still, but something deeply unsettling clung to the Hollowmen like cloaks. Something predatory, unnatural, that made Charlie want to run and hide.

Something shifted around them, something off. Charlie squinted at it and a silhouette emerged beside the big man. Some horrific-looking demon of too-long limbs and fingers like needles. Not real. Couldn’t be real. It winked at her when it noticed she stared. 

Monroe approached them. “Welcome to Los Angeles,” he said with a bright smile. “I’m Monroe, of Silver Lake. This is Charlie Bradley, Jack Shen, and Jesse Harper.”

The woman stopped the wheelchair. It wasn’t a wheelchair, Charlie noticed. The entire assembly was so solid black it seemed to eat light. At first glance, it could pass. It had all the right parts, but it was not of this world. It was shadowstuff, physical shadows directed to her will.

“I’m Azalea of Clan Lasombra,” said the woman. She indicated her companions. “Elena Flores, my childe. Silas. Erik Morgan. He’s here, too, though is of the Clan of the Hidden.”

Her and her childe were beautiful, noble strong features and shining black hair pulled back into high ponytails. Silas had not been gifted as such, though he wasn’t as ugly as Erik Morgan. They all wore loose black clothes, easy to move in, and, not for the first time, Charlie felt like she was in some twisted spy movie.

The demon waved. Only Charlie noticed and she gaped.

Monroe took her reaction in with an amused glance. “I’ll trust your word, Miss Azalea. We’ll be your escort, to see you safely to my domain,” said Monroe. “I suggest we leave very quickly.” 

Monroe led them urgently back through LAX. The wheelchair moved of its own accord, not rolling like wheels but being pushed as though through by invisible wind. Jack kept throwing looks to the shadowy chair and kept close to Charlie.

“Do you have any baggage?” asked Charlie. It was probably a stupid question, only enhanced by the raised eyebrow Azalea gave her.

“No,” she said solemnly. “We had to leave San Diego with some haste. The Tower would not appreciate us.”

“Condolences,” said Monroe.

They stepped out into the parking garage again. The lights of their car blinked back at them as the doors clicked open. Dawson hurried into his own vehicle, and the other started as well.

“As much as I would rather pull off into a dark alley to do this, you may arm yourself from the trunk,” said Monroe. “I suspect our return through the wasteland will be less peaceful than our arrival.”

Azalea rolled up to the trunk and chuckled at its contents. “Believe me, Mr Monroe, the Hollowmen will not balk at the opportunity to defend ourselves.”

They took advantage of the offer, taking their choice of guns and weapons. An invisible hand lifted a sword before it too became invisible. Monroe took a shotgun and loaded it.

Charlie caught the tail-end of tense heated whispers between Jesse and Monroe before Monroe called, “Charlie, in the front with me. Harper, in the third row. Jack, fly over us. If you see anything, let us know.”

Jack gave a limp two-finger salute and transformed into the crow again, swooping out into the night for a victory lap to stretch his wings.

Charlie took her gun from the backseat and slammed the door. She held the shotgun onto her lap. It was heavier than she thought it would be. The footwell of the front seat had another crate of Molotovs. She placed her legs around it and smiled uneasily at Monroe, but he didn’t register it.

“Something up?” she asked.

“Between three Lasombra, two Gangrel, a Nosferatu, and our armaments, I’m confident in our ability to destroy a raider gang.” Didn’t sound confident. He leaned an elbow against the window and put a finger to his temple. “Careful with that,” he added, noticing she held the shotgun. “It’s loaded with dragonsbreath.”

“Doesn’t sound good,” she said.

“It’s basically a flame thrower. The rounds are illegal in California.”

Charlie dropped the gun into the footwell like it bit her. It clinked against the bottles. “Alright. So, aside from carrying illegal guns and smuggling vampires, do we have another problem?”

“Garcia used to have fingers in LAPD,” explained Monroe. “Not many, but enough influence to… direct them away. It was how Greystone was never investigated, despite the amount of gunfire, or gangs were able to peacefully kill each other.”

“There’s been some stuff on the news,” she remembered with a groan. There hadn’t been any arrests, but local news had been going on about gang activity — not downtown, but in the neighbourhoods of the Angels Wasteland. Humans knew something was up.

“I have a face,” he said with regret. “Despite what you may think, I am not the owner of Blue Moon. I remain an investing partner, supposedly human, with a certain local notoriety in the right circles. If we attract LAPD, this could go poorly for me. And you’re supposed to be dead.”

“Maybe we should find Garcia’s dirty cops,” she suggested. Then, she heard herself and felt disgusted. But Monroe nodded.

“I have a man in the Northeast prescient, just in case I need to clean up the Masquerade one night,” he said, “but… nothing this far west. The stations are too deep in the wasteland.”

“We’re bribing cops,” said Charlie sarcastically. “Good to know.”

Monroe turned to her and seemed to enjoy her discomfort. “If it helps, it’s only with money.”

“It doesn’t.”

The other doors slammed and the Hollowmen crawled in. In the safety, the Nosferatu — the invisible demon — became fully visible. The creature looked the furthest thing from a vampire, like some feral grey imp. Erik Morgan smiled at Charlie.

“Not polite to stare,” he said with a voice like a rainbow oil slick.

“Not polite to look like that.”

“Charlie,” snapped Monroe.

She slunk back.

“Erik is a particularly ugly specicman,” Azalea agreed. “It’s why we like him. He’s so… impolite.”

Azalea’s chair had vanished into the shadows. Shadows, which, with three Lasombra, felt like black holes in deep space. Charlie took a deep breath to steady herself. Not her, not the Cobweb, and not the Beast liked that. She, especially, wasn’t fond of the cavalier way most vampires approached human law and social mores. It made her feel like a criminal. 

Monroe started his call again with the other cars, coordinating their retreat. LAX was only twenty minutes from Silver Lake — theoretically. Charlie checked the Raufoss pistol for the fifth time. They had stolen this incendiary weapon and ammo from a team of FBI agents — all of whom were now dead. What would LAPD do if they found a bunch of vampires with these super weapons?

What about when they found out she wasn’t dead?

Charlie felt the invisibility respond to her emotions. His eyes flicking towards her, Monroe reached out to put a hand on her to ensure she was still there. Charlie thought about grabbing his hand, but she stuffed down the childish impulse. The moment passed.

They drove carefully, safely, as to avoid LAPD. The airport’s nest of streets let them go free. Freeway should be safe. It wouldn’t be empty, not this early, but it wouldn’t have traffic. Free, open sailing back home.

Home. The word brought her up short. With a hollow feeling, Charlie realised she had nowhere else. Not really. Nothing outside the four walls in Blue Moon. Vampire club in the basement, humans on the main floor, her room. The coterie. The hollow feeling abated. Maybe it was home. She had lost everything, but maybe she had gained something. Maybe. Maybe.

The light turned green to turn left onto the onramp, but Monroe didn’t go. He was lost in thought.

“Uh, Monroe?” Charlie pointed.

“We’ve been followed for the last few blocks,” he said quietly. “On the freeway, they might open fire. Around humans, we might be safer. We’re not the only ones who want to avoid LAPD.”

Charlie looked in the side mirror. A navy van, like any worker van, was behind Dawson’s car. “Weston Plumbing?” she asked.

He nodded. The light changed and he avoided the freeway. “They might make me regret that.”

He didn’t need to wait long. The van changed lanes and pulled up next to them.

“Captain, are these windows bulletproof?” she asked hurriedly.

Monroe reached for the shotgun and rested it on his lap. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re impenetrable. It means they won’t shatter.”

Something landed on the roof. Charlie jerked until she realised it was Jack. Claws tapped on the roof before flying away again.

It meant something to Monroe.

“Two more cars west,” he relayed.

Charlie let out a low breath. “Okay.”

_ Thunk.  _ Charlie restrained her scream, but only just and her invisibility shattered. The window cracked, transparent black glass spidering into opaque grey. It wasn’t a crack so much as a grey impact. The glass held.

She was calm. Her heart didn’t race. Her stomach didn’t clench. She didn’t want to throw up. She was dead. She didn’t exist. Good.

Monroe sped up. The needle swayed higher. Faster. “Tell me what’s happening,” he ordered.

Charlie spied around the impact of the bullet.  _ Thunk _ .

“The van’s got its window down. It just looks like a pistol,” she said.

Monroe glanced to the window. “Low caliber,” he said, more to himself. “They have no idea who they’re hitting. It’s not Camarilla. Anyone trying to hit me would figure I would be prepared.”

“Are we gonna lead them back to Silver Lake?” asked Charlie. “It’s not exactly a secret where we are.”

“We’re going to kill them,” said Jesse from the back.

Monroe nodded. “If not, they’ll consider it a surrender. They  _ will _ challenge us at Silver.”

Charlie passed a hand over her face. Great. She had tried to prepare herself to kill someone again, but nothing really could. “Okay. Tell me what to do.”

“That glass may break,” said Monroe, far calmer than the car, as it screeched down the road, fast followed by Dawson. “If it does, Obfuscate again.” He handed her a lighter, but didn’t let go when she reached for it. “A lighter is basically a hand grenade. Be careful.”

She took it. “I will.”

“Light and throw, if the glass splits.”

Charlie couldn’t keep track of the streets blazing past them. “Where’re we going?”

“Somewhere vampires can fight,” he said shortly.

Where that was, Charlie had no idea. She remembered the quiet industrial warehouse Rubio had found for them when they interrogated the FBI agents. In the middle of LA, that wouldn’t be easy to find. She could feel the steam coming out of the machine of Monroe’s brain as he thought.

_ Thunk _ . She flinched. The window was almost impossible to see through at this point. Charlie picked up a molotov. It was little more than a beer bottle, stinking of rubbing alcohol with a rag hanging from it. It weighed heavy in her hand. Obfuscate. Lighter. Throw.

“Mr Monroe,” drawled Azalea, “I think we can defend ourselves. To our understanding, no baron claims these lands. Only kine.”

“We all have to live in this city,” he said.

“Can we Dominate the driver?” asked Charlie. “Make them crash?”

“You’ll need eye contact,” he told her. “I’ll need their attention.”

_ Thunk _ .

“I think we got that,” shouted Jesse.

“Let me go,” said Erik. His ugliness added to his command. “I can tear that van open.”

Azalea appraised him. “Mr Monroe, that would be a good idea.”

“I swore to return you safely to my domain,” said Monroe. “Don’t make me break my promise.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?” asked Erik ironically.

“The Masquerade is my chief concern right now.”

Erik leaned over Azalea and opened the door next to the van. At once, he vanished from sight. Charlie followed his movements by his aura — white, striped with black, full of excitement — as he leapt to the van. The roof dented under his weight. Gunshots echoed, and the van returned fire.

“Two more cars,” called Jesse. “Coming up behind us and — oh shit. Jack.”

Charlie’s heart sunk. “What happened?”

“He’s — a wolf, it must be him. On the roof.”

Monroe grimaced. “Jack hates being a wolf.”

A heavy weight landed on  _ their _ roof. Monroe slammed on the breaks, hard. The car screeched to a stop. The momentum threw Charlie against her seatbelt, and threw the Hollowmen and Jesse to the floor. The van tore off into the distance with Erik, chasing Dawson.

An animal yelped and the wolf bounced from the roof, off the hood, and onto the road. In the headlights it transformed. Monroe bolted from the car with the shotgun in hand. The wolf twisted like some horrible horror movie special effects. It became a pale vampire, holding an automatic, but it was consumed by an orange fireball. The cone of sparks and flame left Monroe’s shotgun and completely engulfed the vampire. It didn’t even have time to scream. Flesh melted, leaving bones and smoldering clothes behind.

“Jack, get back here,” shouted Monroe.

A crow dropped from the sky into a black cougar. He crawled up onto the roof, claws scraping metal as he flattened like some predatory ornament. 

Monroe returned to the car and they sped off in pursuit of Erik and the van.

“Nice to know LA has some excitement,” said Elena Flores breathlessly.

“This is not how I like to spend my nights,” said Monroe.

The van had stayed on this main road, some innocolus street of grocery stores and stripmalls. Dawson’s vehicle exchanged heavy gunfire with the van. Both cars were pitted, but stayed level. Charlie could see the Nosferatu. Could  _ see _ him. Both of them. The back of the van had been torn open and Erik grappled with another of his clan — a scaly reptilian-looking demon.

“That… That has to break the Masquerade, right?” asked Charlie, pointing.

Monroe groaned and cursed under his breath. He slammed on the horn and the fight jolted at the sound.

“I can get Erik back here, if you’d rather,” said Elena.

“Please.”

From the darkness between streetlights, a curling orb of shadow hurled at Erik like an abyssal snowball. It bounced off his shoulder harmlessly, but he ducked from the other man and leapt onto their SUV. The roof creaked under his weight, but didn’t dent.

_ Thunk. Plink. Plink.  _ Bullets followed Erik as he leaned over the edge of the car. Azalea rolled down her window.

“What’s up, boss?” he asked. Upside down didn’t improve his ugly face.

“Clan of the Hidden,” she said mildly. “ _ Stay _ hidden, leper.”

Erik rolled his eyes. “Get up here, Silas. Be useful for once in your thrice-damned unlife.”

Silas and Erik both vanished — Erik into invisibility, Silas into a bat as he joined the battle.

“We could be at this all night,” said Monroe. His knuckles tensed on the wheel. “This is sport to Anarchs. They have  _ no idea _ how dangerous it is.”

“I’m not scared of getting shot,” said Charlie. She raised the lighter. “Should I?”

Surprised, Monroe nodded.

Charlie lowered her window. Glass shattered and chipped away in dust, but it sunk away. Wind and the smell of gas poured in. She grit her teeth and did it quickly. The lighter flicked and she was unprepared for the flash inside her.

_ Fire. Fire. Fire.  _

A primal terror that lived in her genes, her blood, that went back to caveman days when humans lit fires to chase away what lurked in the darkness. And she was the lurker.

She swallowed hard and flicked the lighter again. The molotov’s tail went up like a wick. She threw it. Even as it left her hand, she knew it was a weak throw. She reached out with that telekinesis in her hand and the bottle corrected its course, sailing through the open window. 

Chaos. Screams and curses of panic, then terror. The vampires caught fire, like six feet of alcohol-soaked kindling, like the Professor, and the van lost control. It spiraled off the road and onto the curb of a strip mall.

“Great job,” said Monroe breathlessly.

“I just killed…” The screams fell into the distance, a melange of raw voices. “Like, three people.”

“Three vampires,” corrected Jesse cheerfully.

“Three vampires about to kill us,” said Monroe. He ordered directions to Dawson and the other car over the phone, to pull off into Westside. “There will be more deaths tonight.”

“You think the Voermans will scare them?” asked Jesse.

“Tower will,” said Charlie, staring at Monroe in disbelief. He was the one who had told her about the Westside Prince.

“Maybe, but we need to get away from that burnt out van.”

“There aren’t many Lasombra in LA either, are there?” asked Elena calmly.

“Just me, I think,” said Jesse. “Why?”

“Well.” Elena’s face curled. “This all is very simple, isn’t it? If they knew we were coming, they wouldn’t come after us in  _ cars _ .”

“Why?”

“Because shadows are strong,” said Monroe grimly. “Miss Azalea, Miss Flores, I am requesting you to not do this unless there is no other option.”

The other two cars that followed them opened fire. The back window shattered almost instantly. Glass spilled over Jesse and she cursed. More bullets bit through the leather interior.

Nina and Azalea exchanged a look. No other option. They joined hands and shut their eyes.

The shadows oozed out of the SUV like spilled oil. They reflected nothing natural, more a mess of tendrils and snapping maws, a creeping black void. Creatures not of this world.

“Harper, was it, cousin?” asked Azalea. She extended her other hand back to Jesse.

Jesse ducked another bullet. “Yeah.” She took it.

The shadows grew faster, further, until they curled under the speeding cars. The invisible Erik and Silas noted it and chose to jump ship. Surprised, their partners only had a moment to be surprised, then they jumped ship, too.

The shadows came alive like some undersea kraken from myth. The pursuers' vehicles crumpled like the quarter, like a crusher, but they didn’t stay where they had destroyed. Charlie didn’t know what happened. Maybe Jesse didn’t know how this joint-Lasombra-shadow-master thing worked, or maybe Azalea lost concentration.

Either way, the crumbled balls of steel and almost-dead vampires came hurtling towards them.

Charlie screamed in the instant before impact. Monroe threw the steering wheel into a hard left, but the once-cars homed like missiles. Steel screamed on steel and everything turned upside down. Glass shattered. The molotovs poured rubbing alcohol over them. Charlie felt bones break. The airbags slammed her back into her seat. Her head hit the door. 

It felt like an eternity but it must’ve only been seconds. The ruins of their car came to a rest.

“Charlie,” called Monroe.

“Yeah,” she groaned.

“Harper.”

“Fine.”

“Azalea, Flores.”

“We’re alright.” Their voices shook with a timber. “That… never happened before.”

“I’ve seen it happen,” he said shortly. “Potence and Obtenebration gone wrong.”

“We can decide who’s responsible later.” Charlie put a hand to her head and took a deep breath. No one was dead. Aside from, well, the vampires pursuing them.

Charlie clicked her seatbelt off and pushed the deflating airbags out of the way. Her door pressed against something. The ground. 

“Hold on,” said Azalea. “One moment.”

Before Monroe could protest, with another tremendous screaming of metal, the ruins of the SUV righted itself. Charlie threw herself from the car. She could barely process what she was looking at. She knew what had happened — watched it happen — but it made so little sense. Shadows had crushed those two cars, full of vampires, into steel balls like tinfoil and accidentally drawn them into them. The back of the SUV had taken a bad hit, worse than any car crash Charlie had ever heard of.

Car crash. The realization should’ve hurt, maybe. Maybe she should be thankful it didn’t. Even so, she spared a moment to dwell on it.

Jack limped towards her, twisting his shoulder. The other Gangrel, Silas, hadn’t returned to human form and a colossal shaggy black wolf joined him. Erik pulled apart the rumbled remains of the car to let the Lasombra out. 

“What’s up?” asked Jack.

Charlie stared. “My mother. She died in a car crash, about this time last year.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, but his voice wasn’t its usual self. 

Dawson and the other car had managed to survive the pinball attack and pulled up next to the wreckage. Monroe leaned into their front window, discussing the logistics of the last fights.

“This is going rather poorly, isn’t it?” Azalea asked him.

Monroe passed a hand through his hair and gave her his bright smile but his eyes were cold. “Yes. There is a reason Madame Orsay called upon a  _ major _ boon for a bit of transport. We can—” His smile fell off.

Charlie heard it a moment later. A score of police cars had just turned on their sirens.


	12. The Weakness of Mercy

Monroe detested Lasombra. Not only by virtue of his blood and the clan he scarce knew if he could still be considered a member of, but the nature of Lasombra Beasts — arrogant, conquering, domineering. Their power was beyond measure. Dominate, over minds and memories, and Potence, incredible supernatural strength, and Obtenebration, of the abyssal darkness.

He couldn’t deny Azalea had a certain charm to her forthrightness, though. Tonight was going poorly indeed. Rather, it went exactly as he had suspected. That he had only sustained a single casualty — one of Ashley’s ghouls — was a victory in itself.

Mortal police he could deal with.

He had perhaps a minute before they were on the scene.

“Get in the car,” he told the kindred urgently. “Dawson, I want you to go with the Swans. Ensure they arrive back in Silver Lake. We don’t need them now.”

In spite of Dawson’s terrible night, his strong features held firm. “Sir, I am an excellent driver, I will protect you—”

“Dawson, shut up and do what I say,” he ordered.

Dawson listened to his bond and shifted over into the other car. With luck, the danger of the Angels Wasteland had passed. LaCroix need never know they skirted the edge of his realm. All they needed to do was get to Ashley’s hills. Due north.

Voerman wouldn’t appreciate dragging cops through her domain either, though. And there would be cops in pursuit. Monroe couldn’t let himself be stopped with a private SWAT team, armed illegally. Jail with a sunny window was the least of his worries.

“Dawson,” said Monroe again. He felt the Hollowmen’s eyes on him. Ex-Sabbat, a sect that spurned human decency and all aspects of compassion. Having them heed and respect him would be crucial to maintaining peace.

Dawson rolled down his passenger side window. Monroe did not make many ghouls. Each time, they were the same type. A former marine, a rough-looking forty-something, unhappy and single. Until tonight, he hadn’t ever seen something unexplainable in Monroe’s service. He thought Monroe some eccentric mogul or perhaps a criminal. Not a vampire. Seeing the blank faces and ruined minds of Ashley’s ghouls, who didn’t even have names, Monroe didn’t even want to know what Dawson thought. Let alone the car crash they all walked away from.

“Dawson, thank you for your service tonight,” said Monroe kindly. 

He gave the ghoul his hand. Relief washed over him in visible waves at the contact and praise.

“I’m happy you’re safe, sir,” said Dawson, and he meant it with every fiber of his being.

Monroe turned to One, the driver. He wondered where Ashley found the poor wretches. “You’ve done your job tonight,” he said. “Drive back to Blue Moon via the hills, then Hollywood, Los Feliz, and then Silver Lake. Stop for no one.”

One nodded. Ashley hadn’t exactly taken their tongues, but not enough individual thought remained to form words. Monroe wondered what part Ashley’s newfound Dominate had in this — what part Monroe had in this.

The Swans took Monroe’s away. He didn’t need them. Not for cops.

Monroe stood in the street alone. The Hollowmen and his own had crawled into the backseats. Monroe knocked for them to roll down their windows, and he opened the passenger side door to get at the glove compartment. He found a spare dress shirt and swapped it for his tactical jacket.

“Police are no issue,” Azalea assured him. “In fact, after that fight, I am rather thirsty.”

“Ditto,” said Erik.

“Absolutely not,” said Monroe. “We aren’t going to leave a trail of human bodies as well as undead behind us.”

“What’re you gonna do?” asked Charlie scathingly. “Bribe them?”

“I’m going to leave them with their lives,” he promised her. “We’re going to pretend to be humans, lean into my mask.”

Erik groaned and rolled his eyes, but took the hint and went invisible. “I better get something to eat, though.”

“Plenty to eat at my venue,” said Monroe. “Not here.”

Monroe tried to relax. Of course, Azalea had a point. Simplest thing would be to let his new guests slake their thirst on LAPD. It would even be gracious. If it were one or two, he probably would have, but there existed a limit. The sirens that had followed the shootout were numerous. Perhaps five or six cars, maybe more. The sirens spread out and distanced as they swept the streets.

Plausible deniability. He did  _ not _ want to lose this mask. Local humans knew him. They admired him, respected him, not for his clan or blood or age or power, but for his ability. His ability to make music, something no vampire cared about. His ability to throw a party and produce art, encourage talent. Three years was the start of a dynasty among them. He had at least another decade or two with the mask — gold albums, record parties, journalists, fans.

He would not lose it all to go back into the shadows. Not now. He would not let it die and run Blue through intermediaries. He was Ventrue and he would win.

“Let me deal with this,” he said. “Don’t interrupt, just roll with it.”

Monroe took a deep breath, flushed his skin with vitae to give the impression of normal human colouring, and pulled out his cellphone.

Red, white, and blue lights flashed across the next street over. Behind them, fifty yards away, cruisers blocked the road. The police cruisers screeched, rubber on road, as they turned. Who knew what they thought awaited them. Four, five, six. One, he would’ve probably been able to shunt away with Dominate. 

This many he wouldn’t escape. 

“Mr Morgan, stay invisible, and don’t eat them,” he warned.

“Yeah, yeah,” came the disgruntled response.

Charlie, too, vanished from the backseat, though it was clear Jack held someone’s hand next to him. Monroe didn’t understand it. The girl coolly threw a molotov cocktail at a car full of vampires with guns, but LAPD caused her to toss on the invisibility cloak.

The sirens turned off as the cars blocked off the road in front, from both angles. The flashing colours threw garish emergency light over everything. 

Monroe knew he was a sight. Even healing the worst of the crash, he was clearly bruised, out of sorts, but with clean jeans and a cuffed shirt and white skin, he could still be an upstanding human citizen. He dropped to the ground beside the wreck of his car, moving gingerly, and he gathered himself.

Headlights blinded him.

“Freeze! Hands up!”

A dozen police had left their cars, pistols out and aimed at him. And then he saw the dashboard cameras. How did humans react when police pointed deathsticks at them?

Monroe made sure his hand and voice shook. “I just — My friends, we were driving home. And — And there was this car.”

He choked the story out, piece by piece. Personal friends, from out of town, being assaulted in the parking lot, and then chased. With every shuddering stutter, another gun lowered. Monroe prided himself on not needing Presence for this. Disciplines, to Clan Ventrue, could be so vulgar, outbursts of emotion rather than scalpel application.

“Hey,” one of the officers said. “What’s your name? Don’t I know you?”

“Matt. Monroe. I — I have a club, out in Silver Lake.”

The officer nodded and stepped in front of the headlights. “You got in trouble few weeks back, didn’t you? Some nutcases pretending to be FBI in a Denny’s, right?”

Monroe kept the snarl off his face but only barely. “Wrong place, wrong time, sir.”

“Yeah. Just like this.”

Bad direction. Very bad direction. The air tensed and with that many stupid humans on guns, Monroe couldn’t trust in himself. He took a few steps towards the officer who stood in the headlights and found his eyes, wary, alert, but ultimately human.

“They went that way. Black Ford truck.” Monroe pointed. “ _ You really should go check that out _ .”

He felt the dashcams on the cruisers like an all-seeing eye. The Dominate command was gentle, a hypnotic suggestion rather than a vulgar demand, but the officer was human. There was so much that could be expected from him.

Slowly, he nodded. “Come on, Fester, Banes, let’s see if we can catch up with them.”

He retreated to the car and another one pulled away. Four more cars. Still too many officers. They still held their guns. A few talked among themselves. They were being mighty ungrateful, considering Monroe was the only thing standing between them and some very hungry ex-Sabbat.

Monroe turned his shaky smile back on. “Look at this! Our boys in blue, working hard to make LA safe for us! You guys, you really are the heroes of the City of Angels.”

_ Now get the fuck out of my face.  _

One of the officers didn’t get the sentiment. He hadn’t drawn his gun, but he walked approached cautiously. Grey hair peeked from under his hat. “Mr Monroe, I’m sorry for this ordeal you’ve been through tonight.”

“Oh, it’s alright,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Riley,” he said. “Now, I’d like you and your friends to come back with me to the station, get your statement down — all official.”

“No, sir.” Monroe shook his head, frantic. “I’m going home. I’ve been hit, shot at, chased, and my car wrecked — I’m not going downtown, too.”

Four cars. Eight, nine officers. That would’ve been a tasty dinner for the shaken kindred in his car. His fangs itched as his spread his Presence further than it really should be. Why was he going to such lengths to save lives that clearly didn’t want to be saved?

“Sir, calm down,” said Riley in a deep measured voice. “The LAPD is securing this area. You aren’t being arrested, but if you continue to resist—”

“Whoa, I don’t want any trouble, officer,” he said. He backed up. “Look, I’ll give you boys my card. You can come by tomorrow night, any night of the week, but I need to get home tonight. This — This’s been too long.”

He tuned his Presence and slowly, Riley came around. Monroe was reasonable, a vulnerable, frightened citizen in his city in need of protection by the law. 

And blood. In dire need of blood.

“Alright,” said Riley. He took a pad from his pocket and took down Monroe’s personal information. “I’m sorry, sir, you must’ve had quite a fright.”

“I did,” said Monroe empathetically, “but I’m sure you’re going to get them, officer.”

“Oh, we will. Don’t you worry about that, sir. We’ll find the thugs that…” Riley turned from Monroe and looked at the peculiar wreckage like he saw it for the first time. Once, they had been three cars. Now, two of them were little more than twisted steel, burnt by shadow. The third, his own, had been in a terrible rear-end collision and had its passenger side scraped from the road… but the car was upright. “What happened here?” asked Riley.

So damn close.

Monroe turned from him and moved to his still operational vehicle. He had been told he could leave. LAPD would contact him later. Future Monroe gained more problems, but the imminent one of escaping Angels intact was sealed. He would need to get his hands on that dashcam footage, ensure Rubio disappeared those cars, and find a way to erase that shadow damage from official reports.

He faded the calming persuasive Presence from the further officers. It narrowed to a laser pointer, a deterrent of petrifying fear on Riley. Humans typically silenced, avoided him like the plague, a spare moment to escape.

Police officers were not typical humans.

“Step away from the vehicle, sir,” demanded Riley. “Put your hands behind your back.”

Monroe didn’t obey. He wanted to turn the Presence off, but humans didn’t naturally shift emotions like traffic lights. It was all on camera.

“This isn’t right,” he demanded. “I haven’t done anything.”

Riley shoved him against his own car and Monroe was so startled, he failed to react. The indignity made Ventru’s Beast snarl through his lips before he controlled it.

Riley patted him down. Monroe leaned his forehead against the cool metal of his car. Damn it. In a moment, he would find the Raufoss pistol, a secret weapon developed by a covert division in the FBI. It would land him in a federal prison.

Better to be wanted for two felonies, then.

Faster than could be seen, Monroe flipped Riley around and pinned him to the car. He stole the officer’s pistol and settled the muzzle on the back of his neck.

Charlie gasped from inside. The small sound stopped him from outright shooting the man. Damn her.

“Do you want to live?” asked Monroe coldly. “I’ve been working quite hard to let you boys live and you are being mighty ungrateful, as I see it.”

“Don’t do anything hasty now, son,” said Riley. His voice was calm but he smelled like sweat and fear. And orphan. Old enough that both his parents had died. Old enough to want a pension, peaceful days by the ocean, time with his grown kids, baby grandkids.

Monroe put a bullet in the road and returned the gun to its point on Riley. The shot made the human flinch. He didn’t know how much the dashcams had captured or heard, but it was clear that peace was not a way out of this.

The other officers yelled at him. Nonsense. They threatened with Glock 22s. Nothing short of a shotgun would stop him. Here, he was invincible. 

“Lieutenant,” said Monroe impatiently, “I do want to let you guys go, but I don’t see that happening. I would rather not have nine needless deaths tonight.”

“Stand down,” Riley warned him. “They will kill you if you hurt me.”

“They’ll shoot me,” he corrected.

Monroe let his breath out as he considered the cruisers. It was only his dignity. Radios crackled. He heard his name. His mask was already dead. The owner would never let him live it down, break the contract, fight his bond, cause limitless problems. Nine humans didn’t need to die with it. Nine humans, blood and bone and flesh sacks. He let his anger simmer.

“Miss Azalea,” he called.

The window rolled down again. Her smiling face peeked out. “This, too, appears to be going poorly.”

“It rather is,” he said mildly, “I would like to regroup momentarily at Voerman’s establishment. Between Protean, Obfuscate, and Obtenebration, I believe you all have safe passage. From there, we will return to Silver Lake. My apologies for this distraction.”

“I’ll get them there, captain,” said Jack.

From the open window, a black crow burst out into the night. The cops startled. One shot at it. A large bat followed suit. The passenger side door threw open and didn’t shut, but a puddle splashed by Monroe by an invisible foot. An invisible hand tugged on his shirt, as though in warning, but then Charlie left. Shadows deepened and darkened, only slightly, but the trail pulsed down the road as the Lasombra disappeared into the darkness from which they drew their powers.

“What do you think you’re doing?” asked Riley. He struggled, but Monroe was far the stronger.

“Leaving you with your lives,” said Monroe. He sighed and let the Presence fall away. “I don’t expect my mercy to be thanked. In fact, it will bring me a lot of pain and suffering. You are welcome.”

He took the pistol from the back of Riley’s neck and slid out the magazine, discharging the last round. He dropped both and kept his hands raised. A bitter smile crossed his face.

Riley stood and turned, confused, but he nodded and for the second time in a month, Monroe let himself be handcuffed and led away. Monroe turned to face Riley. It was not wholly imperative that it worked, but it was important to him.

“I’m going to need you to  _ forget _ that conversation, lieutenant,” said Monroe.

The word worked its way into Riley’s mind, scrubbing it delicately clean of what Monroe had told his coterie and the Hollowmen. Still struggling to piece his mind back together, Riley dragged him over to the cruisers.

Riley pushed away his worried officers and put Monroe in a backseat. “Hale, why don’t you take Monroe back to the station? I’ll deal with him later. And call CSI…”

The door shut, cleanly turning off Riley’s voice. A young blonde man took the wheel of the cruiser and made his way out of the street, edging back into the Angels Wasteland. If only he had gone the other direction.

“You got a camera in here?” asked Monroe. “I know there was some scandal about LAPD turning off their body cams.”

Hale met his eye in the rearview mirror. “No cameras, asshole. Why?”

“ _ Pull over and idle a minute _ .”

Hale did, confused, but unable to stop himself. Monroe snapped the handcuffs and stepped out of the backseat, into the passenger side. He didn’t attempt any nonsense with Presence. Application with Dominate did more than a fearful Presence ever could.

Monroe waved a hand at the dash radio. “ _ Turn it off _ .”

Hale did. His stared at Monroe, then at his hand as it disobeyed him.

“ _ Turn around and follow these directions _ .” Monroe gave the boy a list of street names and turn signals, back into Santa Monica. “Think you can follow that?”

Hale stared, open-mouthed. His hands shook, gripping and regripping the wheel, but he couldn’t stop. He turned around and drove. Monroe took out the Raufoss pistol, as it dug into his back, and let it sit on his lap. The idle threat made Hale sweat. Smelled intoxicating. Fear and orphan blood.

“Officer Hale,” said Monroe softly, “tonight is your lucky night. I am very angry right now. Incredibly so. But, I do know that the first question that will greet me will be, ‘Did you kill anyone?’ and I want to answer it honestly in such a way that my young woman will appreciate.”

Hale’s hand flinched off the steering wheel. 

“Don’t go for your gun.”

Not Dominate, but Hale was frightened enough that it might as well have been.

“I’m an honest man,” said Monroe. “Not a nice one, but an honest one. I think honesty is far more important, don’t you? When that young woman asks me that question, I will tell her no. Do not make a liar out of me, Officer Hale.”

“Snail,” he choked out.

Monroe paused. “What?”

“My name. It’s Snail.”

“Officer Snail, my apologies.”

They continued for some time in peaceful silence. Snail drove slowly as per his name, in accordance to all known and unknown traffic laws. As the hour inched onwards, Monroe wondered how best to protect Blue Moon. After all, his domain’s chief kindred hangout happened to be inexorably linked to his name. A name that was now a criminal. The owner, naturally, would have to die. Funny, considering how he had contentedly laundered, murdered, and deposed of bodies in the country for nearly a century and a half but threatening a police lieutenant with his own pistol? Lord have mercy.

“What are you, sir?” asked Snail. His voice shook like a snapped rubber band. 

“Oh, I’m nothing special.”

“What do you want?”

“Peace. To be left alone.”

“I’ll leave you alone, sir, I swear. I’ll—”

“Officier Snail,” said Monroe curtly, “I like you, if only because of your ridiculous name. I’m going to meet with some important associates and that lady I spoke of. A strong kind lady. She won’t want me to kill you, but if you continue to irritate me, I will slit your throat and make my apologies to the lady.”

Snail’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. The scent thickened and the bruised, battered Beast in Monroe purred. They ran out of directions. His last turn ended them up in a by-the-hour parking lot ten minutes from the pier. Cars surrounded them with only one dim light above. Families returned from dinners out at local restaurants and couples from moonlit dates on the boardwalk.

“Is there anything else, sir?” asked Snail. He killed the engine but didn’t take his eyes from the windshield.

“Tell me about yourself,” said Monroe. “What’s your first name?”

“Peter.”

“Peter Snail.”

Peter Snail nodded. In spite of himself, Monroe found himself liking the man.

“Who is Peter Snail? How old are you? Do you have a woman at home waiting for you?”

Tears began to form at the corner of his eyes. “I’m… I’m twenty-six. No, no one at home.”

“Any friends? Roommates? Good colleagues?”

Peter Snail shook his head. Tears traced down his face.

Perfect. A perfect candidate for kindred abuse. A vessel who could vanish with no one to really follow him, a ghoul who could be relied on as a contact in LAPD or, with a few decades, as a security with law enforcement background. And Snail could be lucky enough that it was Monroe and not Ashley Swan, not Voerman, not any number of other kindred.

Monroe let the Presence worm out of him. In the car, it felt claustrophobic. Nothing so vulgar, just enough calm to stop the man from crying and relax. Snail scrubbed the tears away, embarrassed.

“I’m not such a bad man,” said Monroe. “I keep my word. I do what is best for those in my charge. I have honour and integrity. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for my people. Officer Snail, I think you and I are a lot alike.”

The Presence altered with his words. It drew Peter Snail’s eye towards him, with a small glimmer of hope.

“I let the lieutenant go,” said Monroe softly. “You know now that I didn’t have to. I spared him, caused myself a lot of trouble with that act of compassion. Compassion is a weakness worth baring though, don’t you think?”

Petter Snail nodded. “I.” He swallowed the letter, but couldn’t shake his head free of the Presence, the insistent need to trust Monroe. “I don’t get along with the guys at the prescient. They don’t get that.”

Monroe could’ve kept this going forever. The play that would weave in Peter Snail’s brain and provide that basis of respect and understanding that created the most humane of ghouls. Summer ghouls, those humans who first tasted the Blood, could become feverish, ghoulish, slaveringly worshipful. Kindness became impossible with such creatures. As blissful months turned into decades, Peter Snail would come to understand kindred. He would commit unspeakable acts for a love he never understood. Should Monroe tire of him, Peter Snail would die, aged out of mortal lifespans and too far removed from humanity. 

For a whim, Monroe could end his human life tonight.

A companion for Dawson, perhaps a surrogate son in this dark world. A present for Hawthorne, her own assistant. 

Peter Snail smiled. Twenty-six-year-old Peter Snail, who had no parents, no girlfriend, no roommate, no friends at his job or elsewhere. What sort of lonely life did he lead?

It could even be called mercy.

Monroe said only, “ _ Forget _ ,” and Peter Snail forgot breaking him out of custody, the threats, the conversation.

Monroe stepped from the car and crossed the street into an alley. 

Tonight, Peter Snail got to lose his job, but not his life.

Monroe knew Santa Monica quite well. When he had first arrived in LA, he had thought to make a life by the ocean, but didn’t get along with Jeanette Voerman, the baron’s sister. Asylum, the industrial Gothic nightclub the two of them ran, was only a few streets over. As he crossed through alleys, a crow swooped down next to him and tried to perch on his shoulder. Wings flapped in Monroe’s face and he offered an arm for perching purposes. 

Jack instead transformed freely in the din of the alley. “You okay, captain?”

“I’m fine,” he said errantly. “What about the Hollowmen?”

Jack motioned for him to follow. As they neared the backdoor of Asylum, the crude industrial screech poured out. The Nosferatu Erik Morgan had a black hoodie up, but didn’t bother concealing his monstrous visage. Elena Flores leaned in the alley alongside Silas, the Sabbat Gangrel. Azalea had summoned her shadow wheelchair again, though not nearly so cleanly. Darkness dripped like heavy smoke from the lines. Charlie sat on the back step with Harper. She jumped up when she spotted Monroe.

“How’d you get out? Did you kill the cops?”

Second question, fair enough.

“No,” Monroe answered resolutely. “They’re all alive.”

He could answer to the Masquerade and Blue Moon’s owner and his mask another night. Tonight, he answered to Charlie. It relieved her. No, it didn’t relieve her. She hadn’t expected him to kill them. Rather, he had confirmed her hope that he wasn’t as cruel as she feared.

“But, we are going to steal a car,” he said.

Charlie scowled.


	13. From Above and Below

Blue Moon, to Monroe’s ever lowering standard of surprise, had not been reduced to a smoldering ruin of ash and flashing lights. Rather, it appeared utterly untouched. Monroe led the Hollowmen upstairs. Aside from some backpacks, they had no great luggage, though they threw themselves gratefully into the seating area in his office.

“That was fun,” said Erik Morgan, taking off his Obfuscate like a tie at the end of a long night.

“Mr Monroe, I would like a word, in private,” said Azalea.

Monroe needed no more Lasombra in his life. “Jack, Charlie, Harper, why don’t you show the Hollowmen into the basement?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the Lasombra he had unwillingly found in his charge.

They did as he asked and quietly, though not without reservations.

Azalea had dropped any aspect of her wheelchair being natural. She sat on a small moving cloud of darkness. Being able to maintain it for such lengths of time and with strength enough to support her was nothing less than an overt display of her power. The car trick must’ve been simple for the three of them.

Monroe sat behind his desk and she floated to join him, dropping herself in the chair opposite. She appeared more relaxed than she had any right to be.

Azalea appraised him. “I know you, as a Ventrue, will think less of my clan and my people.”

Monroe folded his hands and decided to gift her with honesty. “Not less. I’m aware of your clan’s power and proclivities. It is a tense respect I hold for you.”

“And I you.”

“Glad to see we are in agreement.”

She nodded curtly. “We are in agreement of one more thing, as well. Our sect loyalties. I could have taken my coterie and fled to Seattle, Sinapore, or any Anarch Free State. I came here not only for Orsay, but also for you, autarkis. I seek neutrality from the sects.”

Neutrality. The word, once Monroe’s pride, became a stilted ideal a finger’s breadth out of reach.

“I cannot promise you what you seek,” he said. He folded his hands across the desk. “I would indeed like to find a way to live in peace and harmony with both Camarilla and the Anarchs, but I believe that might be beyond us.”

She frowned but swallowed the bitter pill. “I’ve lived in Anarch lands four decades,” said Azalea. “I would again and, if the need presented itself, would fight to resist the Tower to retain my neutrality.”

“Are you attempting to convince me you hold no holdover from the Sabbat, as a Lasombra?” asked Monroe, disbelieving. 

“I am simply one Cainite, attending to her matters and her people. Not unlike yourself.”

Monroe misliked the comparison. The sect and clan they were sired into always left their mark. He was no exception. His Beast complained mightily of the Lasombra.

“I gave Orsay Grimaldi my word and will satisfy the terms of our agreement,” he said. “You are welcome in my domain, with your pack, but you must abide by my rules.”

Azalea pursed her lips. “Go on.”

“Do not kill any other kindred. If you have disagreements that cannot be solved alone, bring them to me. There is no private domain, the entire domain is free feeding. Sire, if you will, but instruct and look after them. Maintain the Masquerade. In return, if the time comes to defend this home we have built, the Hollowmen will do their part.”

She smirked. “I think we will have a good handle on that. I’ve only one question, then.”

Monroe readied himself. “Ask it.”

“Do you believe in Caine, Mr Monroe?”

He sighed and leaned backwards, but this was not a matter of little consequence to Azalea and her kind. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I don’t know where we came from and I haven’t spent much time thinking of it — parasites, angels, demons, gods, cursed, aliens, evolution.”

“Not cursed,” she insisted. “Blessed, free of the chains of humanity, to claim blood by the true divinity of the Dark Father.”

Free of humanity. Monroe didn’t like the sound of that either.

“Do you walk a road?” he asked heavily.

Azalea’s shadows flickered. “You know of the roads and paths?”

“I know a lot of things I probably shouldn’t.”

Time burned the humanity out of kindred. Not even with his second century, Monroe felt it in himself. Very, very old kindred tended to other moral philosophies to keep the Beast at bay. Once, there were clubs or cults of like-minded kindred, devoted to the wild feral Beast, heavenly worship, or hedonism. Part of his agoge included him learning of those created by Ventrue. The Camarilla put a stop to that, insisting upon only the Road of Humanity in order to better maintain the Masquerade. The Sabbat had never received the message, creating unique paths of substantially less kinship with kine.

“I walk the Path of Honourable Accord,” she said haughtily. “I will not even attempt to understand what went through your mind with those policemen. I take it you still look to cattle for your morals?”

“Not as much as I should,” he said. “If you consider yourself a creature of honour, we will have no troubles.”

“I am,” she declared. “I will take responsibility for my pack, the lash and the goblet. I listened to their counsel and left our sect to create a better life for them. Then, we numbered twelve.”

Her voice didn’t tremble. She was Lasombra, far too arrogant and brave for such fear, especially before a Ventrue, but her deep eyes darkened and creased.

“I, too, am a creature of honour,” he said. “All I have ever wanted was to have a safe space for our people. All princes and barons I have been forced to live under have been unworthy. I’ve spent one hundred fifty years taking notes. So long as you stay in my domain, your safety and prosperity are my duty. The Hollowmen have hospitality in the room down the hall and, then, wherever you choose in our Switzerland.”

Azalea squinted at him and then gave a slow rich smile, elegantly curved fangs descending through full lips. “You’ve taken the Amaranth.”

It wasn’t a question. Monroe didn’t need to answer. He knew it would come in useful one night, he just didn’t think it would be with a Sabbat Lasombra.

“Salvador Garcia.”

“He was unworthy of his unlife, then,” she said with respect. Her shadows lifted her from the chair and she drifted backwards. “My Hollowmen will spend the day, but we will look shortly for a haven. Thank you.”

Monroe stood. “Of course. I hope you will all find peace here tonight.”

Azalea shook his hand with another cold, appraising look, before retreating downstairs to scope out the domain’s kindred. Cainites. He had intended to join them, to introduce the ex-Sabbat to his Anarch-sired domain, smooth over fearsome expectations. If they could accept Rubio as a Setite, then hopefully a few Noddists wouldn’t be too much.

But he had bigger problems. He reached for his phone to tell the coterie to come upstairs. It was unnecessary. They were already on their way and the elevator opened.

Monroe raised his hands. “First of all—”

“You broke out of police custody?” demanded Zari. She stalked out of the elevator, five foot eleven of justified anger. Jack followed close behind, an unfortunate look on his face.

Monroe backed up. “Yes,” he said. “I will… need to take care of a lot of housekeeping, as far as Blue Moon and Silver Lake is concerned, but, ultimately, it went fine.”

“ _ Fine _ ?” asked Charlie. She sat on the couch and a panther joined her. Jack, evidently, had nothing to say. Her eyes were wide with shock. “We got shot at, chased by cops, and ran for our lives.”

“I told you it would be dangerous,” he said. “I prepared for it the best I could.”

“How am I supposed to go to Westside when you do shit like this?” asked Zari, exasperated.

Jack stared. “Wait, you’re going to Westside?”

Zari grimaced.

They were missing the point. The future could be dealt with. Tonight, immediately, everyone was alive.

“No humans died tonight,” he said coarsely. “Only one of Ashley’s ghouls. We all survived the raiders completely unscathed.  _ I _ was the one who paid the boon.  _ I _ was the one arrested.  _ I  _ will suffer for it. No one else. I can take care of it — even if I need to burn Blue Moon down.”

Monroe turned from them to gather himself and take a breath.

“That’s exactly what I mean!” Zari exclaimed. She put a hand on him and forced him to face her. The anguish in her face reminded him the last time she had yelled at him: when her daughter had been Embraced. “We have a target on our back — Cam princes one and two, raider gangs, and now the cops. All of us are going to suffer for this, not only you. And you’re dragging the rest of us with you, just pleading for us to shut up and trust you.”

Monroe pried her hand off of him but kept a hold of it. “My dear, I know this danger better than you do—”

“Shut up.”

“My position is not arrogance, it is self-awareness. I will clean this up—”

“ _ How _ ?” Zari enunciated the word, drawing it out in disbelief.

Monroe dropped her hand. “I’ll figure it out.”

“You have no idea,” said Charlie in a dim voice. “Just like last time, with Garcia.”

“And didn’t I figure it out?” he asked, more sharply than he intended.

Zari turned his attention back to her. “I do trust you. I say that because I know what that means to you and you’ll honour it. But I’m not going to shut up.”

The criticism felt unnatural coming from her. Monroe opened his mouth and snapped it shut. Zari sounded like Hawthorne. A lingering fear not born of mistrust or lack of faith, but instead the fear everyone had for those they cared for. He did not know what to do with that.

“I appreciate it,” he said. “But—”

The elevator opened again. Monroe promptly lost his train of thought. He prepared himself for police, sounds of a raid from downstairs, but nothing. Instead, Anton Ritter stepped out, in a bottle green suit and wingtips. He clicked his heels and approached the eldest kindred in the room, gracefully dropping to a knee and waiting to be addressed.

Monroe barely kept himself from trembling. Ritter hadn’t said a word. He didn’t need to.

Monroe was in trouble. Big trouble. His freedom with Pieterzoon was a kindness, not an obligation. Monroe would take a whipping any night of his life — any punishment, in fact. Pieterzoon was not that kind of man, however. For once, Monroe wished he had been.

“Who’re you?” asked Zari, confused.

“What’s going on?” Jack looked between them.

Charlie stood, bewildered.

Monroe pulled Anton Ritter to his feet rather than let him pay obeisance. “He’s a ghoul,” he said faintly. “Forgive me, I need a minute.”

He dragged Ritter into his personal room at Blue Moon and shut the door. Ritter instantly fell to his knees again. Irritated, Monroe let him kiss the ring and veins, and the ghoul stood.

“Good evening, Anton,” whispered Monroe. The words scraped their way out. “I trust all is well.”

Ritter’s face wasn’t as composed and stately as normal. Rather, it threatened to curl in on itself. His shoulders heaved with each breath. “I have a message to deliver, sir,” he said.

Monroe shut his eyes. Ritter feared the words he had to give, feared what would come of them. “Say it, but quietly and quickly.”

Ritter nodded, bit his lip and then said, “Message as follows: ‘Apparently, I have underestimated the effect Anarchs may have upon even the Ventrue, and yet I have overestimated your discretion and dedication to our people and creed. The Masquerade is inviolate. You have incurred my displeasure. I will deal with your newfound criminal record, but you have one week to discard this mask. Please accept Anton Ritter’s services in any manner you see fit.’ ” Ritter licked his lips. “End message.”

The words, even secondhand, hurt more than any punishment Monroe could have taken. He hadn’t understood how he valued Pieterzoon as a fellow Ventrue until this moment. Shame ruled him. He nodded and laughed, because there was nothing else to do.

“God,” he whispered. “I fucked up.”

Ritter held his silence. Fear still cloaked his face. He could neither agree with Monroe nor with Pieterzoon.

“You’re safe with me,” said Monroe. It felt like such a weak promise. “I’m… upset, in my own right, but I will not hurt you. Are you accustomed to such treatment?”

Ritter’s grey-green eyes began to steady and gain some awareness. “No, sir, but it is not my place to dictate treatment by the hands of Cainites.”

“Place.” Monroe repeated the word with distaste. “Your place, my place — the only place any of us has is the place to demand dignity from those above and loyalty from those below. Violence is not included.”

Ritter nodded shortly at the Ventrue maxim. Since the age of the American cowboy he had served. Likely, he had heard it a hundred times, though no one ever applied it to ghouls.

_ Loyalty from those below _ . What a hypocrite he was. Monroe knew Pieterzoon’s proclivities for the Masquerade, his loathing of Monroe’s entrenched human mask. Not in explicit word but direct action, Monroe had betrayed Pieterzoon and, in doing so, himself.

Such a goddamn hypocrite.  _ Dignity from those above _ . He had not — could not — be honest with his coterie. The least he could ever do was be honest about the rest of his life.

The humility smarted, but Monroe accepted it from Pieterzoon as he never had from another. It wasn’t kindly delivered, but it was necessary. He made a note to thank the elder next they spoke.

The storied elder ghoul was a blessing, in truth. Monroe could give him a list a mile long and still not have everything settled. Bills, his social media, financial accounts, a will, attornies, funeral home and all trimmings of killing Matt Monroe. And killing Blue Moon’s owner and replacing him with Ritter himself. Masks entrenched in humanity tended to get tangled in nasty webs of human affairs. Still, Ritter’s prime job would be to keep Pieterzoon’s watchful eye on him. There was no doubt about that. Small trade to make.

“I could use your help, Anton,” said Monroe. He stepped closer and lowered his voice further. “But my coterie know nothing of your regent or our arrangement.”

Ritter nodded. “I am at your disposal, sir.”

“Here’s your story,” said Monroe, thinking things over. It came easily enough. “You are a ghoul I once leant to a stray of mine, Zachary Grimes of Cleveland, also Ventrue, and he has now returned you to me.”

Ritter nodded shortly. “Yes, sir.”

“And you’ll need to be less… Camarilla,” offered Monroe. “No bowing or scraping. No ‘sir’. No ‘don’t speak unless spoken to’.” He raised a finger. “And  _ definitely _ no ring kissing.”

Ritter nodded again and clicked his heels in his customary military salute. His expression didn’t change but the dry display of humour made Monroe smile thinly.

“Excellent.”

Monroe tried to compose himself. It wasn’t easy. He stepped back out, Ritter close behind.

Zari stared at them down the hall, eyes hard under furrowed brows. “What’s that about?”

Monroe placed a hand on Ritter’s shoulders. “Not ideal timing,” he said, though truly, Pieterzoon had impeccable timing, “but a friend of mine from Cleveland deigned to return Anton Ritter to my service.”

Zari gave Ritter a once over. “Ghoul?”

“Wait, there are vampires in Ohio?” asked Charlie with a laugh.

“Yes, miss,” said Ritter. “Master Grimes—”

“ _ Master _ ?” repeated Zari indignantly.

“Poor Mr Ritter has been among Camarilla too long,” said Monroe with sympathy. His grip on Ritter’s shoulder tightened until he heard a sharp intake of breath. “Ventrue Camarilla too, bless his poor soul.”

“Yes, Mas—Mister Monroe,” he said dryly. “Bless my soul.”

“What’s that accent?” asked Charlie. “Where’re you from?”

“Copenhagen,” said Ritter promptly. Monroe couldn’t have said if it were true or not. “Denmark.”

“Mr Ritter, I’ll have quite the unfortunate list for you to work down,” said Monroe, “but, for now, I’d like to speak with my coterie. Enjoy yourself downstairs, I’ll show you around later tonight.”

Confused for the free time, Ritter gave Monroe a strange look, but departed nonetheless.

“Grimes?” asked Zari. “It was Zach Grimes, right? Boston, before the Sabbat invaded, I mean?”

Monroe nodded. “He didn’t bring good news of his former regent either.” He scratched the back of his head. “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. The words cut his throat. “I made a critical error in judgment earlier tonight. While I will still say that our encounter with the raider gang went well, I did not handle the police in the safest manner. I tried to spare their lives, which led me to making reckless decisions with my own life, as well as yours. I will manage the fallout and kill this mask.”

“No.” Zari shook her head. “Come on, you don’t need to be reckless with that, too.”

“What would that mean?” asked Charlie. She stood, her face heavy with concern. “Killing your — mask?”

“Same I did for you,” he said with a shrug. “Fake my death. It’ll be complicated, though, with Blue Moon and the domain. The dead can’t be seen walking around by tabloids, can they?” Bitterness turned his lips.

Zari groaned. “It’s stupid. You can’t go to ground for twenty years, not with the Camarilla in town. We can’t fight both the humans and the Tower.”

“I’ll… I’ll think of something,” he said weakly. “Ritter is competent. He should be able to delay the police and buy me more time to think things over.” Monroe reached out to Charlie and Jack. “Thank you for coming with me tonight,” he said with a tone of finality. “I appreciate it. It wasn’t your fight.”

Charlie breathed a sigh of relief as the argument wound to its end. “We’re all on the same side, right?”

“Of course,” said Monroe. When she left, he reconsidered that perhaps she had meant the Anarchs.

Jack changed to a crow and tapped on the window. Monroe sat on the couch with him.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

The bird didn’t say anything or transform back. He only pecked the glass more insistently. Monroe sighed and opened the window. With a few awkward steps, the crow jumped out and disappeared into the inky night.

Zari hadn’t left. Monroe tried and failed to not pay attention to her as she sat by him. She took his hands in hers.

“Zach Grimes was a nothing Ventrue you taught and picked up in Boston in the seventies,” she said. “You never would’ve made another ghoul like Hawthorne.”

“Ritter came into my possession,” he said cryptically.

“Who does Ritter belong to?”

Monroe worked a muscle in his jaw. The truth was there, so close, or at least shades of it.

_ A Camarilla associate I once knew. _

_ A colleague, across sect lines, who heard I lost my heirloom ghoul. _

_ A Ventrue I admire and who wants to help me, personally. _

Perhaps Zari would accept the truth. Perhaps she wouldn’t. Pieterzoon hadn’t forbidden him from telling his coterie, which only made the lies of his choice that much more disgraceful. He picked up the shovel again and began to dig.

“I won Ritter off a Toreador elder in a ghouls’ duel,” he said. “Hawthorne cut Ritter up quite badly and I took him off his hands. It never sat well with me, so I gave Ritter to Grimes.”

“Did something happen to your stray?” asked Zari.

Monroe kept his voice low, shamed by his words, though not the way Zari thought. “Grimes wants to work his way up into Clan Ventrue and his ties to me hamper his climb. Hence, Ritter. That it was tonight was merely a coincidence.”

Zari considered him and patted his hands. “You’re a good liar, Matt. I don’t care if you want to lie to a fledgling who would yell at you for killing those cops, or Jack, who’s more cougar than vampire, but don’t lie to me. Not when I’m going to Westside for you.”

_ Dignity from those above.  _

“Ritter’s origins are not your concern. He—” Monroe shook his head and shut the window. “He’s a present from a Camarilla Ventrue, that much is true.”

Zari gazed out the window for some time, thinking. “Is it Barty?”

Monroe smiled at the idea and thought of the lion Mithras. “No.”

He couldn’t say it was the local archon, sent to set fire to LA.

“Can you trust him?” asked Zari. “Your… contact?”

“Absolutely,” he answered at once. He caught her eye. “No one can know,” he said seriously. “If Anarchs find out I still talk with a clanmate or that I went to elysium to see the prince, they will lynch me.”

“Alright, then.” Zari dropped his hands and nodded. “So long as we’re telling truths, what possessed you to try to play the police?”

“The weakness of mercy,” he admitted. “We couldn’t flee them in time. I could’ve let the Hollowmen devour them, clean up the bodies, but.” There was nothing to say. No good reason existed for leaving the police alive, aside from Charlie’s gasp of fright as he had been about to execute their lieutenant. The smallest concession to conscience. 

Zari chuckled throatily. “I didn’t expect that to be the truth.” She noticed his change in mood. “What?”

“How is Aisha?” he asked, avoiding her heavy eye. 

The question slid off her like water. “She’s good,” she said fairly. “Adjusting. I’ve done my best to keep Ashley’s claws out of her, but she’s made friends with his kids. The Swans are helpful, if dim.”

“That’s a relief, at least.” He trusted in Zari to rear her own daughter-cum-childe, but he did worry about his domain’s youngest fledgling.

“It is,” she agreed with a laugh. “Aisha’s starting to hate me less, too. Give her a decade.”

Monroe feared they wouldn’t have a decade. When the conflict began, they would continue night to night.

He squeezed her hand. “Thank you, for understanding. I was very worried about the coterie finding out, but mostly you.”

She didn’t fully understand and forgive, but his overt sincerity pushed her that little bit further. “You’re welcome.”

He appreciated it. “Don’t tell the others, please.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” Zari sighed and stood. “Just, be careful what you do, Matt.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all I would ever ask.”


	14. Merry Christmas

Christmas Day came like any other day — or, night. Charlie woke in her bed in Blue Moon at dusk. It took her a moment to realise the date and, with it, came a dawning sense of grief. Last Christmas had been rough, the first holiday without their mother, full of tears from her and Bella. Dustin and his family were Jewish. Hanukkah had already passed, along with the Jewish high holidays. Rosh Hashana, Yom Kipper. Bella would get them next year. Was Bella crying again? Did they put up a tree for her? Did she miss half-remembered holidays and happiness with their mother? Christmas Day, with waffles and  _ Home Alone _ , presents, and then a beef roast—

As soon as she thought of it, it was all she could think of.

Rare center, bright pink. Red, bloody. Meat juices, vital and salty and slurpable.

Blood. The hunger prickled her like a thousand poking needles. She could almost remember what it felt like to salivate.

_ Red and hot, coating the lips and throat. Thick like cough medicine, like cherry syrup, like liquid lightning. The very soul and lifesblood. The satisfying tear of flesh under fangs. The hunt. _

Charlie shut her eyes, laying back in the covers, and waited for the thoughts to pass. They didn’t belong to her.

They did not define her.

It was Christmas, damn it.

She wanted to go hunting, meet up with her current favourite child molester. Then, the elevator door opened to the main floor and she could only stare.

Blue Moon’s decorations had been turned up to eleven. Since Monroe’s escape from police custody, he had closed the venue — at least publicly. Privately, it remained the unbeating heart of the domain. The Christmas tree from downstairs had been dragged up and dominated the far corner. Silver garlands and fairy lights hung around the bar. Monroe’s human staff busied themselves, an aura of Presence-given joy hanging over them. A bluesy Christmas music played, but with the almost empty club it felt lonely in the air. 

What first drew Charlie’s eye, though, was the presents. Good sized ones, too. They stacked like Legos along the wall, covering one table entirely. Rubio rearranged them and set a gold gift with red ribbon at a different angle. 

“Cousin,” he called in greeting.

“I… didn’t know vampires celebrated Christmas,” she said, still staring at the club’s transformation.

Rubio grinned. It was so infectious she had to return it, in spite of him. “Why not? I am extremely pro any opportunity to get drunk and give gifts. Speaking of.” He fluttered his hands over the pile before hefting a gold one and holding it out. “Merry Christmas, fledgling.”

Charlie stared at it, suddenly embarrassed. “I didn’t—”

“Shut up and take it.”

She took it. It was heavier than it looked. “Merry Christmas,” she said meekly.

“Don’t worry,” he said, setting at a booth. “They’re all the same. Mostly, I think.” He picked an almost-empty glass that must’ve held blood and ran his finger along the insides, licking it clean. “Go on, open it.”

Charlie tried to suppress the awkward excitement about unwrapping a shiny present, then gave into it. The paper tore away in shards and, when she realised what it was, she laughed. Of course. Why not?

“That’s really nice of you,” she said. She gave another look to the pile of identical packages that spilled out onto the floor. 

“Ah, come here.” Rubio pulled her into a hug, which she returned. “Merry Christmas. First one in the night.”

“Merry Christmas,” she said and found the words didn’t taste as bitter as she feared. “Did you make one up for everyone?”

He sat again and patted the gifts fondly. “Some of the flavours are different, but they’re all the same idea.” His smile softened and he hesitated. “Do you like them?”

Charlie lifted some of the bottles. The two six packs had been stacked on each other, though not all were beer. Three kombuchas (Cat’s Grace), a wine (Orange Blossom Bloodwine), and a variety of snake beers. Charlie had never drank as a human and couldn’t tell most of the difference, but it looked like an impressive spread.

“It’s a bit early to be drinking,” she said.

Rubio’s mouth fell open. “It’s  _ five _ o’clock, that’s basically normal drinking hours.”

He threw her a bottle opener.

Charlie obliged, trying and failing to keep the smile off her mouth. She pulled out a beer, Red Empress, and popped it. It was bizarre. It should’ve been revolting. Sour like cherries, with a smooth undertaste of deep dark blood. It was delicious, though it did nothing for her hunger.

She nodded to Rubio’s glass. “From downstairs?”

“The bar,” he said. “God, we really should make an us-only place. I’m really sick of being in backrooms and basements. Such a good feeling to slide up to the bar and order a glass of A positive.” 

Rubio raised his glass and whistled. A bartender glanced up.

“You want another?” he asked. “And one for the lady?”

“You got it, man,” said Rubio.

A moment later, he brought over a pair of whiskey glasses of blood.

She snatched her offered glass and drained it in one, only to see Rubio still lifted his to cheers.

“Hungry girl,” he said approvingly.

The blood calmed the hunger. Not much. It settled warm in her stomach. “Always.” As much as the action made her wince, Charlie mirrored Rubio’s action: rimming the glass with her finger and licking it clean. “What were we talking about?” she asked, trying to maintain a semblance of dignity.

Rubio inclined his head. “MacNeil used to have a place. Taste of LA, just a small politico cafe in a dark corner, but — that’s all gone now.” He sighed and stretched out against the wall. “I hope this’ll be what I think it is.”

Charlie sipped from her beer. “What’d you mean?”

“Silver Lake,” he said. “A new Barony of Angels. Back in MacNeil’s day, it was like a community. We all knew each other, got along. By the time he left it to Garcia, it was a dim shadow.”

“What happened?”

“MacNeil was more into giving us the freedom to be vampires than forcing us to act like people.”

She gestured between them. “This is pretty civilized. For now.”

Rubio’s smile softened with his eyes. “It’s what I’m hoping. MacNeil ruled because people loved him. Monroe’s not there, but once people give him a chance, I think that’ll change.”

Charlie considered her drink. “He’s a good guy,” she admitted. Not really, but she didn’t have much else positive to sum up her feelings about the captain. “Did anyone else come yet?”

She was thinking of the Hollowmen, but Rubio surprised her.

“Zari came by with her daughter and took their presents before she left,” he said.

They exchanged a look and Charlie knew that he knew that she knew that he knew where they had gone. Zari and Aisha had gone back home for the holiday. Charlie had done that for Thanksgiving, invisibly sneaking into Dustin’s house to watch the humans celebrate like, well, humans. It left a deep hollow pain. Charlie had resolved to not get involved with Bella’s life again, but Zari couldn’t let her family go. Charlie didn’t know which was strength and which weakness.

“You know, don’t you?” she asked coolly.

His eyes sparkled. “I know a lot.”

“How much?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice level. She thought of the Professor, of Ryuko and his powers, of where Bella had gone, and the odd secrets they had picked up.

Rubio shrugged again. “I don’t know much of anything going on in the Camarilla’s Valley. I’m not a spy, more of a magpie, sitting on my nest of ill-gained gossips. For instance.” He leaned forward with a spark in his eyes and Charlie swallowed. “For instance, did you know that that Hollowmen started a heretical cult?”

“A — What?” Charlie stared.

“It’s true,” he said lightly. “Of course, we all expected some Sabbat to bring around some Noddist faith — Catholic-flavoured, of course, that Lasombra has her roots in Milan — and some souls would drift to it, searching for power and purpose in Caine, of course.”

“Of course,” she said distantly.

Rubio noted her reaction and changed tactics. “And Orion of the Reapers and Midnight of the Deathsingers have been seen feeding on the same vessel, at the same time.” He waggled his eyebrows with a smile. When she didn’t respond, he groaned. “Come on, Charlie, it’s intimate, it’s erotic.”

“Take your word on it.” She chuckled and realised, when she brought her beer to her lips, that the bottle was empty.

The elevator behind them  _ dinged _ and she feared the worst. At Rubio’s gentile smile, she turned and breathed a sigh of relief to see Monroe.

“Did you expect someone else?” he asked, puzzled.

“Hollowmen,” she muttered.

Monroe nodded somberly. “Fair enough. I expect everyone to respect them, though bosom friends might be beyond the realms of possibility. May I borrow her, Rubio?”

Rubio lost his smile. “Absolutely not, Your Highness.”

Charlie stood and followed Monroe downstairs as Rubio cursed his impunities behind them. The elevator slowly closed and his voice drifted off, “Wait, wait, wait! Monroe, you have a present—”

The doors shut.

“Is it alcohol?” he asked Charlie dryly.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Excellent, I’ll need it.”

“Should I be scared of you ‘borrowing me’?” she asked as the doors opened and they stepped into the empty basement.

Monroe furrowed his brow. “Of course not. I’ve never meant you harm and I never will.”

The heavy sincerity in his voice made her uncomfortable. It had just been a joke.

Charlie crossed her arms. “So, what’s up? Is it about your mask?”

“No,” he said with an unfortunate look. “Ritter’s managed to pull strings. The cops won’t raid or get a warrant for my arrest, at least for a few days, but I’ll need to fake my death. Sooner than I’d like. And the humans here...” He shook his worries from his head.

“At least you have alcohol.”

“There is that,” he agreed. He averted his eye, but pushed a green-papered package in her hands. “Merry Christmas,” he said stiffly.

Stunned, she could only accept it. “What?”

“I would’ve given this to you anyway, but the holiday seemed prudent.”

Charlie tore the wrapping paper away to reveal a plain notebook, the type that went on sale for twenty cents in August. “Thanks?” she said. “You… shouldn’t have?”

Monroe smiled thinly. “Open it.”

Charlie fanned through the pages and stared. A small careful handwriting covered almost all of them. The front page bore the title,  _ Vampire Dictionary and A History on the Race of Caine _ . It could’ve been a book in its own right. Charlie thought of all the times she had complained about wanting a vampire dictionary and felt touched. “Wow.”

“It’s not all our history,” he explained. “Mainly a glossary of the big events in the last few centuries: the founding of the Camarilla, the Sabbat, history of the Revolts. Some ancient myths, including that Noddist garbage you’ll hear from others — Gehenna, Caine, Lilith, and on.”

The first several pages were covered with terms. Most of them she knew, but some she didn’t. List of clans, Disciplines, clan curses, and descriptions.

_ Clan Ventrue. Clan of Kings; patricians, blue bloods, aristocrats. Disciplines include Fortitude, Dominate, Presence. Symbolised by a crossed sword and scepter. Cursed to feed only on humans with which a black mark is shared. Founding clan of the Camarilla and historically traced to the Fiefs of the Black Cross (modern Germany, Central Europe, Scandinavia), the Great British Empire, ancient Rome, Chicago, and the New World. _

The wording stuck her. “What’s this curse?” she asked, pointing. 

“The clans are all cursed, individually, by something that drags us further from humanity,” he said. “Malkavians are cursed to bear the Cobweb. Ventrue are cursed to lose our empathy for who we used to be, by feeding on humans with whom, by all terms, we should empathize with: humans who suffer as we did. Every Ventrue has their own feeding requirement. Combat veterans. Murderers. Abuse survivors.”

“Oh.” He didn’t seem all that bothered by it, though it sounded terrible. At least Charlie knew the Cobweb wasn’t real, strictly speaking. “I’m sorry. What’s your thing?”

His smile became ironic. “That’s quite a personal question.”

Charlie realised it and shut her new book. “You’re right. Thanks for this. I really didn’t expect anything.”

Monroe didn’t move for a hug. She made a half step, but it already felt too awkward. They weren’t hugging people, she figured.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “Be careful with that. Kindred history and lessons are exclusively oral. That’s a terrible Masquerade breach waiting to happen.”

Charlie held with with two stern hands. “I will,” she swore dramatically, but she understood what he said. He was breaking his own rules for her. It didn’t mean much to her, but it did to him.

Monroe opened the elevator again. “You get up there and keep drinking with Rubio. Have a good night, childe.”

The small term of endearment touched her. It surprised her, but she liked it.

Upstairs, more vampires had begun to arrive. The thinbloods hung around Rubio with a flight of human alcohols to compare to their present. As Rubio had said, Orion and Midnight came in together with their gangs, but the two of them very close. The Hollowmen huddled together, looking like a caricature of a crew of metalhead vampires. Rhys talked with some who  _ must _ have been Nosferatu, stony skinned demon-looking creatures. The sight of her sire made Charlie made her blanch, but, then Rubio waved her back over.

Despite the fact they all must’ve woken up an hour or two ago, it already had begun to feel like a party. Not a party like a night club, but a party like in a private house. Rhys jumped behind the bar and twiddled with the music. Suddenly, the Christmas music vanished and something with too many synthesizers blasted. Copper and E raised their glasses too enthusiastically and beer slopped over their hands. As others began to get blood from the bar, the smell hung in the air like a miasma of good cheer.

Charlie just about sat with Rubio when she noticed Jesse linger in a dark corner, its darkness only enhanced by the shadows and her mood. She looked like she would rather be anywhere else.

“Be back in a bit,” she said to Rubio.

“Oh, don’t you worry,” he said in a knowing voice. “You can always come back, cousin.”

Charlie made her way over to Jesse, who let some of the shadows lighten a little. She wore her standard dark jeans and t-shirt under a black jacket, all but disappearing in the colour. Jesse gave a small smile and the sullen glower relented.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Merry Christmas,” said Charlie.

Jesse laughed, a harsh and rough sound that made Charlie smile. “This is a helluva thing,” she said. “Evil demons celebrating the birth of Christ.”

“You see anything about Jesus here?” she asked, gesturing to the atheistic decor.

Jesse didn’t take her eyes off her. “Suppose not.”

“You should come around. Have a drink. Rubio has a Christmas present for you.”

Charlie could see Jesse almost said no. At the mention of a present, she crossed her arms and settled deeper into her corner.

“Shouldn’t be here,” muttered Jesse regretfully. A muscle in her jaw worked as she looked over the celebrating vampires. “I only came by to give you this.” She uncrossed her arms and held out a hand. A black pin sat in her hands, decorated with a set of vampire fangs like a Halloween prop. “Thought you could add it to the collection. If you want, I mean, you don’t need to. Doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Charlie hadn’t added to the pins on her jacket in ages. She used to pick them up everywhere. Zodiac and new age occult symbols, a rainbow flag, momentos from Europe. Things that looked cool.

Mutely, she picked up the pin. It wasn’t expensive. It wasn’t practical. It wasn’t much of anything, really. Charlie added it to her lapel and straightened it. A very different embarrassment crossed her when she realised she didn’t have anything to give Jesse. She should’ve.

Jesse’s scowl lightened. “I’m sorry, about LAX.”

Charlie shook her head. “It’s Christmas. Come have a drink,” she said again.

Jesse sighed, but looked up at her through her pale lashes. The darkness around her receded, the black oil that coloured the whites of her eyes pulling back. Her eyes were almost as dark, a deep rich brown only shades lighter. Charlie realised she stared and looked away.

“One drink,” said Jesse sternly. “One, and then I get out of here.”

She wouldn’t, but it was a lie she told herself so that she didn’t empathize with the evil monsters. Charlie let her have it.

Charlie grinned as she made her way back to Rubio. He crawled over the back of the booth, leaping to greet Jesse. She tensed, but he shook her hand solemnly with both of his.

“Miss Jesse Harper, a magister of Clan Lasombra, you are as resolute as the aegis of our endless night,” he said. His voice echoed in a sinister chorus of a thousand mouths. The grip he held onto Jesse with must’ve been iron. “We welcome you—”

“Christ,” whispered Jesse.

Rubio’s eyes had blinked from the side, stealing away the brown and replacing with the green and yellow slitted eyes of a snake. “We welcome you into the—”

“Stop it,” Charlie scolded. “You’re scaring her.”

Rubio’s eyes didn’t stop, but he smiled and dropped Jesse’s hand. “Come on, cousin, get your present and let’s get you a  _ drank _ .”

Jesse started at the sudden change in Rubio, but Copper grabbed her a chair and she found herself shoved into it, a red box set on her lap. She unwrapped it, surprised to see the variety of alcohol.

“That’s… very generous,” she said.

Rubio raised his glass. “We all deserve to relax sometimes.”

And relax, evidently, they did. The thinbloods had opened their presents, too, and the bottles spread across the booths. It soon became difficult to tell who’s was whose. Charlie took her new  _ Vampire Dictionary _ and brews up to her room.

By the time she returned, Jesse had clearly broken her promise of one drink. She argued relentlessly with Copper over the finer points of an anime she and Charlie hadn’t gotten around to, while everyone else — including the determinedly cheerful Rubio — tried to pull them away. Despite the subject matter, both of them bore fangs and hissed over the drinks. Charlie grinned and helped pull Jesse back.

Jesse started when she spotted Charlie and sunk back into her chair, looking up. “Got a bit carried away, huh?”

“Little.”

The club hadn’t nearly reached capacity, but all the regular faces showed up, along with some new ones. Ashley surveyed the room from the nest of his children, more Nosferatu came to the dance floor, some leather jackets that might’ve come from Downtown. Several wolves, rats, and smaller creatures padded through the bar or curled on tables.

And a cougar. Jack carried a kitten by the scruff of its neck in his mouth. He transformed as he joined them, carrying the small black furball in one hand.

“Rubio,” he called. “Heard you got something for everyone.”

“Sure do.” Rubio gestured to the dwindling pile of presents. “Choose your poison.”

Jack grabbed one nearest, ripping the paper off, and tore the bottle cap off with the fervor of someone who didn’t like how sober he was. The cat dove off his lap and scambered with the shreds of wrapping paper that surrounded Rubio’s table. Charlie smiled as the cat turned head over heels and smacked right into her chair.

“He’s yours, Charlie,” said Jack heavily. He forced a smile. “Merry Christmas, baby bat.”

“What? Really?” Charlie reached hand to the cat, who deftly crawled up her arm to sit on her shoulder. It cried a meow, balancing delicately. “Is this normal cat behavior?” she asked loudly over the music.

Rubio slammed his glass on the table. “Great work on that beastie,” he said to Jack, who took the compliment with a stilted nod.

“Little feller is a ghoul,” said Jack, “so, he doesn’t need much food, if ever, but he’ll need your blood and he’ll love you for it. Vicious, clever, and he’ll be kitten-sized forever. Won’t age.”

Charlie took the tiny meowing machine in hand. Bright yellow-gold eyes looked up at her with pure sweetness. She stared at Jack. “You’re giving me an immortal kitten? Oh, Jack.” She threw herself into a hug. After a sigh, he wrapped his large arms around her.

“You’re welcome,” he said gruffly. “Now get off me, I’m not drunk enough.”

Charlie did and the cat dug into her hand with razor sharp claws.

“Oh, look at him,” whispered Rosa. She reached out to pet the kitten.

“Does he have a name?” asked Copper.

“Luna,” said Jesse, too loudly. Charlie smiled at her. “Come here, Luna.” She clicked her tongue and the cat looked up. “See, it’s a Luna.”

“It’s a he,” said Charlie with a groan. “And that’s from  _ Sailor Moon _ .”

It only opened the floodgates, though.

Loki. Abyss. Velvet. Batman. Balron the Destroyer.

Charlie raised her now-empty glass and stood. The room swam, more than she expected. “Calling him Oreo the Almighty, Eater of Worlds, Bane of Mice, Drinker of Blood, and He of Eternal Youth.”

Rubio took up the call. “All hail Oreo the Almighty!”

The thinbloods, Jack, and Jesse raised their glasses. “All hail!”

Their glasses clinked and Charlie frowned at hers. “Gonna get a refill,” she said. “Anyone need anything?”

She had a few more glasses pushed into her arms and she stuck her tongue out as Jesse added hers to the growing pile.

“You asked,” she taunted.

Charlie made her way back to the bar. Had it been open to humans, the floor would’ve been packed wall to wall with the delicious — yet Beastial — smell of people. With the domain’s vampires, there couldn’t have been more than forty. Again, it struck her how much it felt like a stupid middle school class, some  _ Lord of the Flies _ shit. Ashley would be the first one to cannibalize, she figured. Then again, he had kept his distance.

She dropped the glasses at the bar and the human righted them all.

“What’ll it be?” he asked.

“A tray,” she said firmly. “Oh, and snake beer.”

He filled up the glasses and, rather than trusting her to carry it back without incident, wisely chose to carry it himself back to the booth.

“How fancy,” drawled Copper. “Thanks, girl.”

They took their drinks back and sent the human back on his way. Oreo crawled over Rosa like an intrepid adventure cat. Charlie liked him already. All the better that he was immortal.

Rubio caught Charlie’s eye and held up a present. It wasn’t in the metallic paper of his presents, though. Pale sky blue, peppered with snowflakes and cartoon Santas.

“Got something here for you,” he said.

Charlie took it, confused. “Who from?”

“The Nos said you’d know. Either way, I know.”

“How?”

“Thought we already established this.” Rubio raised his hands with a flourish. “I know everything.”

Charlie tore off the paper and knew who it was from. It wasn’t magic, but something tingled down her fingers through the Cobweb. The feeling of another Malkavian. Hope. Someone hoped for something.

It was a thick heavy book, the dust jacket intended to look like leather with a gold lock and title.  _ Dungeons & Dragons: Player’s Handbook _ . She ran a hand over the raised font. 

Rhys.

She settled the book on her lap and tried to bite the smile off her face, but she didn’t succeed. She didn’t really want to, anyways.

  
  


“Have a drink, Monroe,” said Ashley.

Monroe pushed it away for the fifth time, but this time couldn’t keep his silence. “You aren’t drinking either.”

“It’s not poison.” Ashley smiled and took a long gulp from the offered snake beer. “It’ll help you with your troubles.”

“What makes you think I’m troubled?” Monroe pulled out his new Blackberry. Ritter worked quickly, he had to admire that. It wasn’t incredibly top of the line, but it was relatively secure and held his old number. Pieterzoon didn’t contact him.

Ashley fixed him with a scathing look. “Oh, nothing. Just that you check your damn MySpace page every ten minutes like some self-absorbed model as your mask’s reputation shatters into a thousand tiny pieces.”

Monroe glanced up guiltily from his phone. “Give me that damn drink.”

Ashley obliged with a smirk and stretched out like a lean silver tiger. His childer had brought snacks — ghouls, or some poor humans who struggled to keep up with them on dancefloor. Celerity and Presence bloomed like strobe lights. Ashley had no such entertainment. Monroe felt his own misery entertainment enough for his unfortunate ally.

“Heard you’re looking for a fourth,” siad Monroe, gesturing to Ashley’s childer. Blake, Nita, and Delilah. Blonde, brunette, redhead. “Another boy, to keep the set equal?”

“Whoever I find,” said Ashley. He noted Monroe’s empty glass. “Good boy.”

Monroe bristled at the patronizing sarcasm. “Don’t do it yet. Neither of us need the burden of a new childe when the Camarilla make their moves.”

He rolled his eyes. “So serious. Bad boy.”

Monroe wasn’t sure he liked this Ashley, the one who played up or leaned into the one-part blood bond. “I mean it.”

“What will it take for me to fix up a new kid? Two, three months? If we can’t find allies, we can always make them.”

“No,” said Monroe. He dropped the word like a stone. “In New York—”

“I can’t even tell you how little I care,” said Ashley earnestly. “I really don’t care what some hoity Tower prince, or bow-before-me elder, or other pathetic cape did. I’m talking about what  _ we _ can do, here, now.”

“It would be prudent to learn from our history.”

Ashley nodded to his childer. “ _ That’s _ my history. Three impervious, loyal, beloved vampires. I would die for them, them for me. I fashioned them from clay—”

“And humans aren’t clay.”

“Well, of course not,” he explained with an evil look in his eye. “Humans are statues. First, they must be melted down.”

Monroe had been around to see Ashley rear Delilah. The process was unsettling at the best of times. The human known as Rebecca had died, some nerdy, abrasive, lonely girl who studied marine biology and dreamed of going to Monterey. She lost herself in a tidal wave of blood-fueled glittery orgies among the rich and famous in Beverly Hills. Monroe saw her intermittently but each time became more disturbed.

It had taken  _ weeks _ . Not months.

It only made Monroe sure of one thing. Ashley abused his command of Presence and the decadent reputation of Toreadors to disguise his own power over people. He understood people, a rarified power among their kind. The fact that Garcia loathed how celebrities kept turning up exsanguinated only endeared Ashley to Monroe further. Enemy of thine enemy. That, however, had done little to make them friends.

Monroe still remained uncertain if giving Ashley Dominate had been clever or a mistake. Monroe seemed to be making more mistakes of late.

“We can’t all sire our loyal ghouls upon their deaths,” said Ashley casually.

Monroe’s grip tightened on the glass. Too much. It shattered, raining glass across them both. “That’s funny,” said Monroe without humour. He brushed the shrapnel to the floor. “That’s very funny, Mr Swan.”

“She’s in Westside, last I heard,” said Ashley, as though nothing had happened.

“If I cared, I would ask Rubio.”

“Maybe we should ask that glass if you care.”

“Maybe you should mind your own damn business.”

Ashley came too close, his lips dragging across his ear. Monroe refused to give him the pleasure of getting a rise out of him. “You fed me your blood.  _ You _ are my business.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic,” he snapped. “It was an exchange. I doubt we would’ve made it out the Angels Wasteland alive without your numbers.”

Ashley sat back, put out. “Fine. If you had a sentimental or clever bone in your body, you would’ve given me blood with a fuck. Bond takes better that way.”

Monroe gave him a sharp look. “You’re as old as I am. Act like it for once in your life.”

“Grow a heart, or a dick. Orsay can help with that.”

Monroe shook the image out of his head before it could take root. He had long known Ashley had associated closely with Orsay. No natural human looked as Ashley did: violet eyes, pearly skin, silver white hair at what, twenty-five? Did that include a further friendship, though? Ashley had implied Orsay would not mind him as her overlord.

And, despite Monroe’s fears, Hawthorne’s return had been kept rather quiet. Ashley didn’t know. At least, he pretended not to, as though common knowledge was the extent of his own.

“Did you even fuck as a human?” asked Ashley with a worried look. “I can’t imagine you having fun with a girlfriend —  _ or _ boyfriend.”

“I did,” he said stiffly. Toreadors. Why were they like this? It was his own fault, associating with Ashley. Monroe summoned his courage and sighed, giving him a small nugget. “Regardless, you aren’t my type.”

Ashley pounced on it. His mouth fell open and he placed a delicate hand on his chest. “ ‘Not your type’? Is smooth not your type? Beautiful? Powerful? Nay, considerate?”

Monroe snorted and felt himself smile. “Ash, you’re many things. Considerate is still not one of them.”

“You wound me, dearest friend.  _ Wound _ me — again. What have I…”

Ashley prattled on for some time, like the incessant parasite he was, and Monroe helpless but to listen. He didn’t mind it so much. Despite the lies and secrets Monroe kept these days, he and Ashley shared an unspoken understanding as only liars and secret-keepers did. Ashley had a taste for intrigue.

And his noise did make a fine backdrop. 

Monroe felt his phone vibrate. A small  _ buzz _ . Again. And again. Every one a new notification. Email, a comment on his page. Tabloids pestering him for a report. The owner, leaving a new furious message. Discourse tracked his posts. Cruel words, accusations, speculations as to his honour or dignity. Humans knew a fraction of his nature and, in that, all his accomplishments in their eyes amounted to nothing. A mere threat, police speculation as to his involvement with a gang, and he was worthless. His record, his artists, his club, even his vessels — turned against him in the name of common human herd-minded decency.

The Beast steeled him against it.  _ Predators concern themselves not with the scolding of prey _ .

And yet, bother him it did. Each new small  _ buzz _ made him grind his fangs.

Finally, he could stand Ashley’s prattle no longer, nor could he stomach reading them in front of him.

“... my friend,  _ mi amour _ , my—”

“That’s quite enough of that nonsense. I—”

Monroe stopped short and could only stare. He knew everyone to live in his domain. Of that, he was certain. Not everyone had come tonight, but he recognised only some of the Black Beards, a gang from Downtown, to not be his.

These three kindred what approached him were not his. He didn’t know them by face, but expensive black suits struggled to contain their breadth. They wore panoramic mirrored sunglasses. Monroe knew two types of kindred to wear sunglasses: those young enough to fancy the drama of their life and Toreadors. Truly, one in the same, Monroe considered as he eyed Ashley’s diamond-studded pair.

“Who’re you?” asked Monroe cordially.

They wore no guns but that did not mean no threat. In his own establishment, the domain he lorded over, there was no true threat, but he felt that fear regardless.

“Clive,” said the middle man. “Silver Eagles. Baron Isaac Abrams sends his regards.”

“I’m sure he does no such thing, but you may return with mine.”

Monroe steadied himself and, consciously, aligned himself with Ashley, who, for once in his twice-cursed unlife, remained silent.

Beyond the Eagles, with the rest of Silver Lake, the celebration continued. Obnoxious music chosen by his kindred, shrill drunken laughter, too-loud conversations. In this corner, the air thickened deeper, unnoticed.

“Baron Abrams formally requests your presence to discuss the threat of the Camarilla,” said Clive, his face unreadable.

The last time Monroe had answered such a summons it had resulted in witnessing Garcia bite Bella and Embracing Aisha. 

“Where and when?” asked Monroe.

“A neutral ground. Griffith Park Observatory, tonight, at two AM.”

“I’ll be there.”

“By all means,” said Monroe as the Eagles turned from him, “stay a while, enjoy yourselves. It’s Christmas.”

Clive raised his head higher, almost imperceptibly, and the others pretended to not hear him. Clive faced him.

“No, thank you, sir,” he said. “Baron Abrams has ordered us to not languish in the blood and circuses of the Tower. Good night to you, sir.”

What a snide little insult. Monroe smirked. Clive thought he was in Abrams’ confidence, but was no more than a messenger boy. Abrams cared little if Monroe knew what he thought of him. He filed that away for later reference.

“Y’all give Abrams our finest regards,” Ashley shouted, but they ignored him as most tended to. He snorted. “Assholes.”

“Rich, coming from you.”

“I thought it was my finest feature.”

Monroe’s phone  _ buzzed _ . He flinched at the sound. 

“Go, Your Highness,” said Ashley sarcastically. “I’ll be here, whenever you think of us lesser immortals.”

“It’s hard to forget about you.”

Ashley’s musings turned into a coy smile and Monroe left before he could think of a witty retort. He needed to tell Pieterzoon of this. Ritter, likely, knew how to get a message back to him. His phone  _ buzzed _ again, and again. Monroe threw open the front door with too much force. It slammed into wall, startling some kindred, and denting the brass doorknob.

He didn’t check the emails and notifications until he had driven home.

Petty clever insults, on his appearance, his artists, his club. Extensive essays about his criminal tendencies and questionable past — mostly wrong, but more right than they should be.

The criticism blended with the hundreds of comments Monroe had weathered from Camarilla and Anarchs alike. And now humans.

_ A greedy malcontent, unwilling to pay his dues to his elders. _

_ Chaotic selfish Caitiff who thinks he can do no wrong. _

_ Arrogant Tower cape. _

_ Slave. Liar. Boon-dodger. _

_ Autarkis. Out-of-clan. Outsider. _

Outsider then, as well as now. Unwanted. A thousand roads led from his feet, but the light at the end of his tunnel was only an oncoming train. Then, as well as now.

The quiet suffocated him, judged him, loathed him. Monroe exited the car and resisted the urge to slam the door again. Patience, he counseled himself. He had far more issues to deal with than this.

“It’s just me,” he announced hollowly to the house.

Hawthorne jumped at his entrance. She sat with Ritter, a chessboard between them in the midst of a game. Monroe had been right. She could accept Ritter’s assistance, where she wouldn’t accept his. Ritter leapt to his feet, but Monroe waved it away, and he slowly sat.

Hawthorne’s eyes bored into him and they silenced his petty worries. She stood, leaving the game unfinished, and turned down the hall. As she walked, her fingers glided over familiar guiding lines: the walls, couch, the bannister. Monroe watched her from the entry hall. Her nails tapped every now and then, a drumbeat as she hummed.

“You went to Westside to learn Auspex, didn’t you?” he asked after her.

Auspex, nonnative to Ventrue blood, would’ve let her discern the sounds as echolocation, her sensory perception enhanced as to make it easier. Westside’s dense population of Toreador and Malkavians all would have the Discipline in their blood. Hawthorne had the good sense to not pester Ashley for his own.

Hawthorne didn’t face him, didn’t even answer. She retreated further down the hall.

Monroe took his coat off and followed her. “If you want to complete your agoge, it would behoove you to—”

He turned the corner and almost ran into her. Hawthorne’s mouth twisted in bitterness.

“We won’t talk about Westside,” she said coarsely. “If you insist, I will call a taxi and find my own way.”

“I’m sure you will,” he said.

Hawthorne wandered into her bedroom and made her slow rounds of the room. “It’s untouched,” she decided.

“Like I told you.”

She ran her hands over the book at the top of a lopsided pile. A Stephen King thriller, the cover worn thin and pages dogeared, a bookmark in it.

“It’s  _ The Dark Tower _ ,” said Monroe heavily. The book had been one of her favourites. Maybe, one night, he could find her the audiobooks. Tell Ritter to, at the very least.

Hawthorne’s breath rattled and her head hung.

It was the only way he could apologize. To help and to give her space.

“I’m… going to hunt,” he invented. “I shouldn’t be gone long. When I get back, we can go back over the Brujah Wars.”

Her hand slipped from the book and she sat on her bed.

“I’ll leave Ritter here.”

Hawthorne smirked but it didn’t chase away the haunted weight on her shoulders. “Poor Ritter. Going to be both our ghoul.”

“Just for a little while.”  _ Until you leave. _

Monroe let her grieve her lost humanity and vision.

None could say that Hawthorne was not a dedicated student. Out of her own lust for learning, she had attended universities for the last sixty years. She had a keen memory for recitation and enough knowledge of human history to contextualize. The Ventrue oratory was, traditionally, verbal anyways. She absorbed it like a sponge. Monroe lavished her with earned praise, but it slipped off her. Far more worryingly, she did not eat. Ventrue fledglings often starved rather than faced their life-long feeding restriction. She did not know or tell him her type, but Ritter had confessed that she had fed off him. Perhaps hers was long-lived ghouls. That would be a terrible restriction.

As the night darkened and deepened further, Monroe excused himself and made the call he should’ve made hours before. He didn’t give Ashley a chance to snark at him.

“I’ll be at Blue in fifteen. Be ready to come to Abrams’.”

Put out, Ashley said coolly, “And why would I come with you to be killed?”

Monroe hung up. It was an order, not a request. And Ashley knew that and his leash would answer, even if he didn’t want to. Ritter came, too. 

Ashley showed his petty displeasure by slamming the door, far too hard.

“You are coming,” said Monroe, “because this is  _ our _ domain—”

“Oh, is it?” Ashley sneered. “ _ Shut off the car _ .”

Startled, Monroe felt the Dominate wash over him. He pulled the keys from the ignition. The car silenced. Among kindred, Dominate only worked on those of higher Generation. Monroe knew he was unusual. Ninth was powerful. His sire had been the fourth childe by an ancient Parisian Ventrue. It was only chance Monroe had the power over most kindred he had ever met.

Ashley was lower. Eight, Seven, Six.

And with a name he had invented to come to LA. No history. No backstory. Nothing. What he had let slip — his origin of New Orleans, among voodoo and thinbloods — Monroe suspected to be false.

Ashley reached over and stroked Monroe’s hair errantly. Monroe refused to show the fear that growled in the Beast’s heart.

“I don’t want any misunderstanding between us,” whispered Ashley. “About who’s in charge, I mean.”

Monroe raised an eyebrow. “I don’t frighten so easily.  _ Keep your hands to yourself.” _

His blood in Ashley’s veins gave him the advantage to overcome the Generation gap. Clearly struggling, Ashley took his hand off Monroe, both of them balling into fists with barely contained anger.

“This is ours,” Monroe asserted again. “Switzerland, or the Blue Barony, or whatever the hell you want to call it. I wear the crown, the target, the albatross. You have  _ exactly _ what you want, every request—”

“The crown,” he repeated with a sigh. “Very Camarilla. I just want to make sure the captain is steering this boat on the path we agreed on — independence.”

“I am,” he promised. He held up his keys. “Now, may I start the car again?”

“You may.” Ashley smirked. 

Monroe chuckled goodnaturedly. “What’s your Generation?”

“Why? Interested if I could start a diablerie farm for you?”

Monroe’s eyes slid sideways. “Are you, of all people, judging me for that?”

“Envious,” Ashley clarified. “For a Brujah, Garcia had fucking amazing blood.”

He probed further, but Ashley did not answer his question.

Griffith Park came out of the darkness like a lush leafed creature. Four thousand acres of sloping mountains and hills. This late into winter, the rains had turned the yellow grasses verdant and the trees full of fervor. The hills continued higher and further west, to show the Hollywood sign, and further north, where they made up the LA Zoo and a maze of trails and campgrounds. Past nine in the night, the park had closed.

Griffith Observatory, too, was closed, but the parking lot held a few cars other than their own. The Observatory appeared like a university, a long white stone rectangle topped with a trio of slate domes. Sharp angles of white paths and trimmed gardens paved the way to the doors.

“Have you dealt with Abrams before?” asked Monroe as they approached.

Ashley didn’t answer until Monroe pulled open the door. “You picked the wrong person to drag up here.”

“Could’ve told me that before,” he hissed.

The neo-classical entry hall glowed with false candlelight and beige marble. A mural of Greecian gods decorated the rotunda above. Columns highlighted hallways to other wings. Isaac Abrams, Baron of Glendale and Burbank, that erstwhile lord of Hollywood film and media stood in the center. His gaunt handsome face and double breasted suit belonged to a Golden Age film, though his Silver Eagles looked more from  _ The Godfather _ .

He took one look at Ashley and snarled. “Come to steal from me again, Swan?”

Ashley sighed dramatically. “Look, just admit that I won and stole the DeSimones from you. It was a long time ago, I’m not gloating anymore—”

“I suspect your grip on the crime family will waste just as your grip on your childer has,” said Abrams. Ashley started to move, like as not to do something stupid, but Monroe gripped his shoulder. “But it is good to know the autarkis by the company he keeps.”

“You can always know me by the company I keep,” said Monroe. “Your past with Ashley Swan doesn’t interest me at all. Why have you summoned me here, on Christmas of all nights?”

He kept a close eye on the Eagle nearest, with a shotgun. There would be so many better ways to kill Monroe. It was only intimidation. It would not work.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, autarkis, but your past interests me greatly,” said Abrams genially. “And what of the LAPD? Are they going to burst in here and arrest us for trespassing?”

“They’re dealt with,” said Monroe icily. “I highly suggest you keep your nose out of my business.”

Abrams only smiled.

The Eagle behind him, one of his stoic advisors, spoke up. “Every kindred in the city saw that run in with the cops. Have you done this before? How long before someone matches a photo of you from the thirties with one from those tabloids you adore?”

Heat rushed up Monroe’s collar. The Beast responded to the humiliation with fangs.

_ Who is he to demand of you? A rose with too few petals. The only place he belongs is an urn. Roses, lunatics, ferals, the rabble, all they were meant to be subservient to the Ventrue. Return them to their place. _

Monroe’s own anger only grew. His failure with the police remained a tender spot, but Pieterzoon had given him the tools to fix it — Ritter and his own influence — and expressed his disappointment plainly but without judgment. 

Monroe swallowed his fangs. “If I wanted to hide in a derelict castle, I would’ve remained in the Camarilla,” he said. “I came here to do what I want. I will not be so kind to you a third time. Tell me why I am here.”

Abrams straightened his tie, though it hadn’t been crooked. “Last night, Bartholomew Vaugh attacked my domain. My kindred and I were unable to repel them and, so, we fled to the Park.”

“That sounds like a whole lot of ‘not our fucking problem’,” said Ashley.

Abrams nodded shortly. “Well, my people and I are without a barony and, as such, I will reclaim my old lands in Hollywood.”

“ _ What _ ?” demanded Monroe. He took two steps forward.

Six shotguns cocked.

Abrams sized him up. “I think it would do well to teach you humility. This isn’t the Tower. You might be a blue blood but, here, we all bleed the same. The same rules apply to us all.”

“Baron Abrams,” said Monroe, “with all due respect—”

“This is not a negotiation,” snapped Abrams. “I am telling you. I know Hollywood better than you, could sink my fangs deeper and faster, and you will not dislodge me easily. The domain is mine. If I find so much as a toe in my domain, I will cut it off. Is that clear?”

Fine. Less respect.

Monroe glared. “You escaped the purging of your domains? You, the baron and lord of the land, the only target of a purge orchestrated by not one but  _ two _ Camarilla archons? Even if it was lucky coincidence that you live, this is it, isn’t it?” He gestured to the six Silver Eagles. 

Abrams narrowed his eyes. “You dare call me a coward? They will come and we will destroy them. David will slay Goliath, in a glorious shower of—”

“We can come to a fair arrangement.” Monroe took a few more steps forward and ignored the raised shotguns that followed his every move. 

His lip twitched. “All ‘fair’ means is that the deal is not yet done.”

“Exactly.” Monroe pointed to Ashley Swan, who defiantly leaned against the door, looking like he would like to dash out. “Live under your enemy and you will survive this praxis. Ashley Swan has to watch his shadows for your vengeance. I must take the heat for your survival. There are no winners when things are fair. Return to your industry, your home, your childer. Silver Lake will bulwark you from the east, the remaining Angels Wasteland from the west. We can work together on this.”

He caught Abrams’ eye. It wasn’t Dominate, nothing as coarse. Under the posturing, it was clear to see his desperation. Abrams had wholly not expected to be offered sanctuary and instead resorted to taking it. It degraded him. He liked thinking of himself as a gentleman. 

Monroe produced a business card and slipped it into Abrams’ breast pocket. “If you need anything,” he said sincerely, “reach out. I’m not what you think I am.”

Abrams didn’t say a word. He nodded shortly, and Monroe and Ashley left in a hurry.

“How the fuck,” started Ashley in disbelief, “do you go on the biggest crock of shit I’ve ever heard and just… have a new convert? Is there some secret Ventrue Discipline no one’s told me about?”

“Just be thankful he bought it,” said Monroe darkly. “I want you to keep an eye on him. Keep him under your control, but don’t let him know it. Don’t let him build power—”

“You think this is my first rodeo?” he snapped. “I got it.”


	15. The Last Round

“So desperate you’re bringing roses now, huh?” asked Ryuko.

His nest had a few more unique items hanging around. A bony spine with a misshapen skull on the end, a leather bound tome with a lock on it, and a fleshy goblet. He had been doing work for Pisha.

Jack dropped the roses into the waiting vase. The water was stale; Ryuko had expected him to come sooner. “Guess so.”

Ryuko stuck a mark in his book. “I gotta talk to you about something. Sit.”

Jack sat, scared of what would follow. Ryuko dangled his legs from the table in the corner.

He grimaced. “I don’t know any easy way to say it, so I’m just gonna come right out and tell you. I joined the Hollowmen.”

“You — what?” Jack reached out to prise up Ryuko’s lips, feel his skin. It wasn’t cold. There were no fangs. Ryuko swatted him away. “You can’t—”

“I can do what I want,” said Ryuko waspishly. “And would you calm down? I’m just exchanging some research on the Abyss. As Pisha’s told me, Lasombra are nightfolk experts about the realm.”

“Ryu—”

“Is she wrong?”

“Well, no—”

“Good.”

_ “But that’s not the point.” _

Ryuko sighed. “Pisha’s told me everything. About the Camarilla, the little dick-measuring contests the princes are in. I can take care of myself.”

“Do they know?” demanded Jack. “The Hollowmen. What you are.”

“You wanna reorder that sentence?” He smiled, pleased. “They say I’m a Childe of Lilith.”

Jack stared, struck dumb. He never thought he would hear this Noddist trash again. Not again. “Caine spurned Lilith. They’re Sabbat headcases — they  _ worship _ Caine, they were his swords, his army against the apocalypse.” Jack scoured a hand through his hair. “You have no frame of reference for what this is. Sure, they’re religious. They aren’t harmless Christians who do nice charity work. They’re the isolationist paramilitary compound in Montana, preparing for the Rapture.”

Ryuko let out a long, low, calming breath. “And what if it is coming? Gehenna?” Jack turned and scoffed, but he continued, “The Red Star is in the heavens, the thinbloods—”

“There is no Red Stars,” said Jack tirelessly. He had heard Skelter go on about this before, with some half-mad rabid sewer cult shortly after Jack’s Embrace. Skelter had never been the same. “The sea isn’t boiling. There’s no tsunami of blood. Ancient monsters aren’t rising out of the pyramids. The  _ sun _ still comes up, isn’t that supposed to be warning number one?”

Ryuko glared. “There  _ is _ a Red Star. It’s invisible without the right Sight, but it is there. And when Caine comes—”

“You aren’t a vampire!” shouted Jack. “You’re only human.”

Ryuko started as though Jack had slapped him, his eyes filled with hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he said fast, but not fast enough.

Ryuko smiled, all argument gone out of him, and placed a comforting hand on Jack’s chest. “It’s okay. It’s all okay. They said there would be disbelievers, that most nightfolk were servants of the Antediluvians. It’s not your fault.”

He was too calm, too smiling where once there had been anger. It spooked Jack.

“Please, you’re not thinking straight. It’s only a matter of time before the rest of LA finds out there’s a mage.”

“For the first time in a long time, I am,” he said, still smiling, still nodding. “I have people, friends, magical colleagues—”

“Vampires don’t got friends,” warned Jack. “They’re using you—”

“And I’m using them,” he said with a laugh. A chill ran down Jack’s spine. “Just like Pisha. Mutual benefit. Look, I’m happy you came tonight, I really am, but I asked the Hollowmen to come to the theatre tonight. I wanted to show them the deathsight and Azalea thought it could be a good place for a permanent cathedral.” He shrugged. “You’re welcome to stay.”

“I think it’s probably for the best if I leave,” said Jack dimly. “I got some stuff I said I’d do for Monroe. Have fun.”

“Suit yourself.” Ryuko’s smile became more intimate. “Maybe, after, I could stop by your place and wait for you? I could even bring food and we could finish those movies?”

A lump grew in his throat. “Sounds like a plan.”

Jack didn’t have a name for the uneasy feeling that stuck, cloying, to his gut as he left. Whatever the Hollowmen were doing, it was bad news. And he was helpless to do anything. All he could do was hope Ryu had more sense than he had shown and go do his job.

Jack was always suspicious of people who thought they were hot shit. The danger came when other people thought they were hot shit, too. And, to hear Anarchs go on about it, no one was hotter shit than Nines Rodriguez.

Jack didn’t love Monroe. Most of the time, he didn’t even really like the guy. It wasn’t like Monroe worked very hard to make himself likable. Jack did what he was told because he trusted his word, that shit needed to get done, and he could do it. Easy as that. Jack took a lot of risks for him sometimes. Even risked his life more than once.

Jack knew how gangs worked, how vampires operated, and how the captain ran his ship. Every gangleader and baron asked you to die for them in rivalries or defence. Kill or be killed. And you would die, hating them honestly — and mutually. There weren’t many that asked you to love them. Nines did. In his short time with the Last Round, Jack had seen enough licks die loving Nines, knowing Nines would die for them, knowing it was worth it if Nines would be proud. 

In the same time, he had never seen Nines take so much as a bullet.

Jack never had a lot of conclusions, but he had a lot of suspicions.

And, after all these years apart, Jack knew he would draw suspicion if he came around by himself and tooted Monroe’s horn. He needed a wingman. Winggirl. 

Jack flew unannounced to Blue Moon and hoped for the best. Monroe lingered around upstairs at his desk, eyes lost in thought, looking out of sorts.

“What’s up?” asked Jack.

“A lot,” he said irritably. “Word spreads fast through kindred. Feel free to let people know. Abrams’ domain has been purged. He survived and we’re harbouring him in Hollywood. And Hawthorne came back.”

“That’s good,” he said appreciatively. “Uh, Hawthorne, not the rest of it. Swan’s about as much Toreador as I can stand.”

“How is Downtown lately? What’s been Nines’ mood?”

Jack scratched the back of his neck. “Uh.”

“You are on your way and will let me know later tonight,” prodded Monroe gently.

“Yeah, man. Exactly. I was gonna take Charlie, night out on the town.”

“Hmm.”

Jack lingered, not feeling right about passing him to go to her room. “Do I gotta ask permission?”

Monroe gestured back and shook his head. “Feel free.” He settled back down to his desk, whatever work he had been doing.

That wasn’t a no.

Jack shrugged and hammered on Charlie’s door. “Wakey, wakey,” he shouted.

Charlie opened the door with Oreo on her shoulder. She hadn’t gone anywhere without the cat since Christmas. “You really don’t respect people’s sleep?”

“Heading to a vampire bar downtown, wanna come with?”

Charlie snorted, then considered. “Five minutes.” She shut the door to get dressed, emerging in too much denim, buttons, and frizzy hair. The cat was still on her shoulder, crowing.

_ Oreo the Almighty, King of All the Night Touches. Fear the master of the dark _ —

Jack scritched him behind the ears and he struggled to not fall off Charlie. She scooped him into her hands, smiling. Jack smiled to himself. He’d done well.

Jack encouraged Charlie to turn into a bat, but that just resulted in a lot of squeaking and flapping of arms that refused to turn into wings. Her car it was. Monroe’s, really. Too shiny, too new, too black. Gangrel Beasts bristled at dependency. Jack knew that if Monroe withdrew he would sleep his days in the ground, scrounge money from odd jobs or thievery, and go his way. His heart ached for Charlie, though she didn’t seem to mind so much.

“So,” said Jack as Charlie pulled them onto the freeway to go downtown, “Nines Rodriguez is—”

“Oh, I know who he is,” she said haughtily. “ _ And _ the Last Round, gang and bar.  _ And _ what he did in the Revolts.  _ And _ what Brujah are.”

Jack blinked. “That’s… good. Monroe been giving you lessons?”

And she told him of the  _ Vampire Dictionary _ she finally got. Jack, no stranger to secret scrawled books that could wreck terrible havok in the wrong hands, felt a grudging respect.

The Last Round was some scruffy dive bar in a forgotten corner of downtown, nestled in a valley of skyscrapers. Neon shone its name in red, the only lights around. A large arrowhead in a circle had been spraypainted over it. The symbol of the Brujah. On a second look, it didn’t look anything like a bar. Plywood covered the windows. Music didn’t bleed under the door. It looked abandoned, like the other places next door advertising  _ Cheap Lease _ and 1-800 numbers. 

Jack let Charlie enter first, knowing how that damned door stuck. He wrenched it, twisting it back into shape. When it slammed, that stupid little chime almost fell off.

He heard Damsel’s voice immediately and, as it always did, it scorched his heart.

“Listen here, new bitch bat, this ain’t your happiest place on earth anymore. This is  _ Nines’ _ domain. Disrespect it and I’ll kick the fangs out of your ugly face, capiche?”

“She’s with me, Damsel,” Jack called.

Damsel’s sneer lost its edge. “Bat’s gotta learn the rules.”

“I’m not about to start shit,” said Charlie in a fair imitation of Monroe’s trademark irritable tones: two parts cold anger, one part indignant arrogance. 

Though it didn’t look like much outside, it looked like even less inside. Definitely a dive bar, with dingy vertical paneling that might not’ve been washed since the Revolts, and wordless tough-guy music. Pale lights, no windows, and a strong smell of beer and blood. Dartboards scattered on the walls and a crowded pool table in the back. 

Jack pulled Charlie to the bar and motioned to Ricky for two glasses of snake beer. Damsel settled in on his other side. 

“What’s that elitist cape-bitch got you two hound dogs sniffing around here for, huh?” she demanded. 

Jack wasn’t nearly drunk enough for this shit and made pace to catch up.

Damsel scowled. “If you think you’re too good for Nines, maybe you shouldn’t drink his beer. I  _ said _ —”

“Looks like it’s Ricky’s beer,” said Jack mildly. He threw a handful of crumpled bills at Ricky. At least one was a twenty. “And my money’s just as good as yours. It’s a free country. Free  _ State _ .”

Ricky, a bartender of too much coarse grey hair on everywhere but his head, threw a bar rag over his shoulder and took the money with a guilty look. Unlike most around, he didn’t wear a jacket over his wifebeater. “Play nice,” he said gruffly. “You know better’n most what Nines’ done around here.”

Jack rolled his eyes but kept drinking. “I got words to trade with the man,” he said. “Can wait a bit.”

“Everything you want with him goes through me,” said Damsel, pushing to get up in his face again. “ _ Everything _ . So, if Monroe thinks he can twirl his moustache atop the pyramid and send in a Trojan horse, he got another thing coming.”

“A… pyramid?” asked Charlie meekly.

“Drink,” encouraged Jack. “It’ll go down easier.”

Damsel tossed the bar stool aside, her face as flushed as her hair, and she snarled with fangs stained by too many drinks. “For capes, it’s all a pyramid scheme — them on top, us on the bottom.”

“Uh-huh. And  _ what’s _ a pyramid scheme?” asked Jack.

Damsel opened and shut her mouth before settling for gesturing, bigger and bigger. “It just makes sense if you give it a goddamned second of thought.”

She had no idea. Jack slid his empty drink back to Ricky, who pulled another draught. Jack missed good beer. It was about the only thing he really did miss. And bars, as far as vampires knew them at least, almost always only had the one type. Rubio only made good shit, but sometimes Jack wasn’t in the mood for what was on tap. Took a lot of poking to get Monroe to order a second type on the regular. 

“Right,” said Charlie, unconvinced. She turned to Ricky. “So, you’re the local ghoul, then?”

A mouthful of snake beer snorted out of Damsel’s nose. “Downtown don’t do slaves,” she said firmly.

Rick waved a stubby finger at Damsel. “Now, missy, that wage you kids pay me  _ is _ slave labour.”

“Take it up with Nines, old man,” said Damsel with a shrug. “What’d you make before we came around?”

Rick grumbled. “That’s besides the point.”

A voice came up behind them, silent as the grave. “Nice to see you outta that dungeon, kid.”

Charlie choked on the beer and coughed hard. A vaguely familiar guy patted her back, smirking. Windswept dirty blonde hair and impossibly skinny and gaunt under layers of sweaters and a nylon bomber jacket. “How you doing?” he asked.

Jack leaned back, frowning so hard he looked like a cartoon. Huh. Jack hadn’t seen the boy in a damn long while. Rhys had liked his books and games, was as tight with the Professor as Jack had ever been.

“Nice to see another Math Class grad,” said Jack suspiciously. 

Rhys lost his humour. “Ain’t no more Math Class,” he said.

Damsel waved a hand. “Damsel. Jack. Charlie.”

Jack snorted. “You trying to introduce a sire to his childe? Think they met, you know, when he turned her.”

Rhys cackled and patted Charlie on the back again. “How you doing?” he asked, more seriously. “Look like you’re doing great.”

Charlie felt herself smile in response. “I didn’t know if I would say this but, yeah, I am.”

He pulled her into a half hug. Her head hit his bony chest. “Good, that,” he said.

A quick scout, Jack didn’t see any other Math Class graduates. Almost all Downtown gangs, all licks or ghouls — of course, not slaves but valued citizens of the Blood,  _ of course _ . Nines’ Last Round, including Skelter and some new faces played poker. Black Beards from Huntington, a twin brother pair. A woman from Chinatown’s Bone Flowers threw darts with a boy from Kyoma’s Lin-Kai, a Japanese gang. Nines liked everything lined in a row, puzzle pieces that squarely fit. No one lived in Downtown without his say so. Safety, he insisted.

It only made the three girls stand out. And girls they were. They must’ve been teenagers, once. Olive-brown skin ashed by the Blood, handsome hawkish features, and sleek ink black hair. Salvador Garcia had Embraced them for their resemblance to each other, and to him. Jack wrestled for their names. Miranda. Lorenza. And the new one, Embraced days before Garcia died. Valencia. Some prolific sires had their brood take their name. Swans, Garcias. Like some sort of twisted family. They hung at a table in the back, faces tight and angry, voices low. It was hard to not see their guns. Skelter left his game to sit with them. They welcomed him with smiles.

The hairs on the back of Jack’s need stood up. Instinct told him this wasn’t a safe place for him, or Charlie, anymore — if it ever had been. Before, the worst threat was a sparring match with Damsel knocking a fang. Now. Now he wasn’t so sure.

Rhys had been following his line of sight and, for a moment, they locked eyes and an understanding passed.  _ For the Professor, just this once _ . They never had gotten on well. 

“Think you could babysit?” said Jack, leveling his voice casual. “I need to talk to Nines.”

Charlie jerked from her conversation with Damsel. “I don’t need any babysitter!”

“I  _ said _ —” started Damsel.

“I don’t give a Nosferatu’s grey saggy ass what you say,” said Jack. He tossed down the rest of his second drink. “I’m talking to Nines and I’m not leaving here until I do.”

“Don’t you got anything but fur between your ears?” snapped Damsel. She stomped after him. A hand snatched his jacket. “Big man don’t want to talk to boot-licking feral trash like you.”

Jack spun them on the stairs, pushing gently but firmly. “This isn’t any fang-snapping gang drama,” he said, lowering his voice. “This isn’t ‘who does Nines come down off his cloud for  _ this _ week?’ I’m here by Monroe, and Nines will want to talk to Monroe.”

Torn by loyalty and pride, Damsel sneered but the thin shell of her attitude cracked. “You always did think you were better than us,” she said, pained.

“It’s got nothing to do—”

“Nice to see you again, Jack.”

Jack knew by the small breath of adoration that escaped Damsel’s lips who stood at the top of the stairs behind him. He didn’t need to hear the voice. Nines Rodriguez. Six feet of denim and flannel bound together by tough-guy take-no-shit attitude. He looked like he could kick serious ass, but not yours. Never yours. 

“You sure, man?” asked Damsel, uncertain.

Nines didn’t answer her. He just waited.

Jack followed Nines up to his floor. “Cloud Nines” licks used to call it, since he rarely ever came down for a drink or game. It was an event when Nines turned up. Licks felt proud when they got ten minutes alone with the legend himself. 

The worn floorboards vibrated with the bass below. Ricky probably used the floor once for extra seating, but that was before the Last Round commandeered the space. Plywood boarded the windows and crates of illegal munitions made tables and chairs.

“I’m sorry,” said Nines, taking a seat. “Never wanted it to go this way, kid.”

Jack sat, but cautiously. He tensed his tendons, ready to transform in case it went worse than he figured. He did his best to avoid Nines’ aura. “How you mean?”

“You’re Skelter’s kid. Sort of makes you my grandson, my blood even if you ain’t it. Makes me sad, is all, a strong loyal Gangrel like you working for that elitist caped-up bastard.” Nines had that way of making you feel special. He was a good listener, a better speaker, and those blue eyes — so blue they were almost colourless — that said so much more than he ever could.

Jack licked his lips. “Yeah, sorry you feel that way, but that’s not how it is.”

Nines leaned into the corner, throwing his boots up on the crate-table. “Oh yeah? You telling me Monroe  _ isn’t _ a Ventrue? That he  _ didn’t _ kill a storied leader of the Revolts? That he  _ doesn’t  _ have you running messages for him because he’s too chicken-shit to face me himself?”

“Nah. He just knows you and I go back,” said Jack, shuffling under the weight of the words, “and he wants to make sure there won’t be any trouble. Hey.” He laid a hand on the table. “Switzerland, it ain’t just Monroe. It’s a bunch of others, all sorts, just like Downtown here. Brujah, thinbloods, Caitiff, Toreador, Malks—”

“And an old Ventrue on top, just like it should be,” said Nines with a smirk. “The Camarilla’s goddamned pyramid scheme, and he’s drafted you into it.”

“Monroe’s different,” he said. “He’s taken on a bunch of people who need his protection, provided for them, made sure they’re safe and happy.”

“There’s a difference between being good to  _ your _ people and being good to  _ people _ ,” said Nines. His eyes darkened, sharpened, like thin ice.

It made sense. That was the thing about Nines. He always made sense.

“Alright. Well. What’re you planning on doing about the princes — Westside and Valley, now? And the Sabbat, coming out of East—”

“Don’t you talk about East LA,” he growled. “Not when that’s  _ Monroe’s _ fault. Everyone knew Garcia held the line, that Sabbat never made it further west than Cal State. Now, I got three pissed off crying Brujah teens in my bar, blind drunk with vengeance and too inexperienced to handle the Sabbat.”

“What if I could take some of that off your hands?” asked Jack. “Monroe’s not wanting any war or conflicts with other baronies and powers. We can all sit down in a meeting—”

“I got that meeting right here.” Nines pulled the glock from his belt and turned the safety off. He slammed the gun on the table. Jack eyed it nervously.

“Right.” Jack grimaced. He didn’t want to deal with the Sabbat. They’d been prepping for another siege since the sixties. God knew what forces they had by now. And, if Monroe wanted to stay neutral between the sects, did the Sabbat factor into that? Between Orsay and the Hollowmen, probably. “I don’t mean anything by it. Just—”

“Boy,” said Nines fondly. Like it had never been there, the rage melted, became less directed at him, more that background heat that drew licks to him. “You know that there’s always a place back here, just waiting for you. We don’t all jive with our sires, but there are lots of people here who know and love you, man. It breaks our hearts to see you clinging to that cape. You’re so much better than that, smarter, stronger, more loyal. Your heart’s in the right place.” He snorted. “You got a heart, for starters. And you’re running around doing his bidding like a lapdog. Tell me why. What does he have that I don’t here?”

Jack hated being called a dog, or any of the hundreds little snide insults that came with being a Gangrel. A raging feral savage, wise in the ways of the wild, better seen than heard. Nines had a way of making it sound like anyone else was saying it. Nines didn’t say it. That was Monroe, chaining and leashing and making him his bitch.

Jack swallowed the idea before it took root. “Peace,” he said plainly. “I’ve never been looking for conflict, you know me. Even if it’s necessary, fighting’s not my thing. I can and I do, but I’m looking to live my nights without hurting others and getting wrapped up in drama.”

“And what do you think is the price of this… utopia?” asked Nines, concerned. So gravely concerned. He reached across the table. “You think it comes free? Nothing in this godforsaken world comes free, man. And, what happens when you’re the only one to wave a white flag, huh? What happens when Westside or the Valley come down with torches and pitchforks?”

“Then, I didn’t start it,” said Jack. That hand stole his attention, the offering of coming back home — if it had ever been home. “But I sure as hell would finish it.”

The hand came closer, crossing the gun. “I’m not gonna beg you,” said Nines. “I’m gonna believe that you’re as smart as I know you are. Not all of us are pumped about the gang life, but it’s better than the alternatives.”

“What about the Barony of Angels?” he asked, more like pleaded. “MacNeil started it and we all honoured it as a safe zone. No fighting, no killing. A place where licks could live, free, when every other baron hosted a whetstone to sharpen your fangs.”

Nines sighed and withdrew his hand, pulling at his gruff goatee. The distance was like a knife. “Angels was a mistake, letting anyone come and mooch. MacNeil knew it. Garia, in the end, knew it. The rest of us weren’t willing to get dragged down by those freeloaders not willing to defend it. We knew we were better than that. You grab a group of like-minded folks, stake your claim, and fuck anyone who tries to take it from you.”

Jack knew it was coming. He’d heard it a thousand ways from Nines, in prettier words, at Rants.  _ You’re better. You’re special _ . _ What we got here is better. It’s special. _ The thoughts dug through his mind like worms through a corpse.

“If that’s what the Anarchs are now, I’m not interested,” he forced himself to say. He thought of Charlie, downstairs. “We need to just get along. It’s the only thing that’ll make sure we survive. The princes won’t make peace, but all the Anarchs got to. Abrams is on our side—”

Nines laughed. It wasn’t his usual rough bark, but a shrill howl. “Abrams? Toreadors have always been in bed with the Ventrue. I told MacNeil back in the day that the high clans would be our downfall. All of them —  _ every single one _ — has wheel-n-dealed and crushed the little people to get what they want.”

Jack nodded. He knew that. Everyone knew that. LA was made of two types: free-born licks, sired into the Free State, and Camarilla refugees. Even Anarchs who had lived in Cam cities had been subject to their rule, played the wicked game and betrayed themselves to survive. And, then, there were those Camarilla refugees who only came because they fucked up bad. Abrams had been one of those, the first one back in the forties. Ashley Swan, shortly after. Then came the Voermans. Monroe. Rumours clung to them like flies. Didn’t help that, eventually, they wound up in positions of leadership.

“Monroe’s not gonna fight you,” said Jack. “That’s my message. That’s what he’s got to say to you. And he’s gonna fight like hell to make sure we can all live, free and safe and happy.”

Nines, somehow, didn’t like the sound of that. He took his gun back and Jack had a wild thought that he was gonna shoot him. But he just belted it and stood. “Good to know,” he said.

And Jack knew his welcome had worn out. He hurried back downstairs. Damsel had gone to go sulk somewhere, but Rhys and Charlie had some new friends. The Garcia girls.

“We all have faults,” Miranda was saying. “Sometimes, we aren’t strong enough to fight ourselves, but there are worse enemies than princes.”

Rhys chuckled nervously. “Might not want to say that too loudly around here.”

“What’re you saying?” asked Charlie. Her lip curled. “That Salvador Garcia taking my baby sister was a personal fault?”

Valeria looked like she might snap, but Miranda calmed her. “Sal was a man of persistence. It’s in the Brujah blood. He got an idea into his head and he would feed, sleep, and breathe it. I’m sorry you stood in the way—”

“I did not bring that down on me and her,” snapped Charlie.

Miranda raised a hand, wincing. “Please, Bradley, I’m trying to do the right thing here.”

Charlie gaped like a fish, slow and soft, staring. “There’s nothing you or any of Garcia’s people can say, really. You traumatized my sister and forced me to give her up. I’ll —” She swallowed. “I’ll  _ never _ see her again.”

Valeria choked a sob and turned away into Lorenza’s arms. Miranda pinched the bridge of her nose.

“I know,” she said plainly. “And that is pitiable, but we need strong allies who know when to lay personal conflicts aside. East LA is all but fallen. Sal’s El Hermandad are all but gone. Those with fairweather loyalties remain in the ruins of Angels. So many have met Final Death trying to hold back the Sabbat. Dying, for you. You are nearly as young as Val, do you know the Sabbat?”

“I do,” said Jack. He took Rhys’s place beside Charlie and she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Great, Jack’s back, now we can go. Nice meeting you—”

Jack caught her shoulder. “I think we should stay, little bit longer. What’s the news on the Sabbat?”

Miranda looked him up and down and didn’t like what she saw. “You’re Monroe’s Gangrel, right?”

There weren’t many Gangrel in the city. Jack shrugged. “I guess so. The Sabbat?”

“Same crew that there has been for decades, the failure of the sixties’ siege. Tight, organized, and very, very small. Mostly Tzimisce, couple of war parties. A single focused attack could wipe them out in one strike.”

“Then why’s Nines not jumping at the bit?” asked Jack daringly.

Miranda glared. “He is. He said he’s on it, but—”

“I don’t even know his excuse but I know that that ‘but’ is all the answer you’re ever getting,” said Jack with a crooked knowing smile. “It’ll always be reasonable, always make you feel like he’ll help you in a couple of nights, and then, maybe, Damsel or Skelter or one or the others will and Nines’ll get the credit.”

Mirada jerked back, stunned and disbelieving. “He’ll get on it when he realises there’s no more East LA standing between him and the bishops. He needs some extra hands, though.”

“I’m not working for Nines,” said Jack flatly. “That’s that. I can take this to Monroe, though, and see what he says. If you’re worried Downtown’s not safe anymore, you girls can crash in Switzerland.”

Miranda snorted at the name. Jack started to get it. Monroe liked names that made others underestimate them when, really, at the end of the night, all anybody wanted was to be safe and free. And the Ventrue got on top. Nines’ ugly sentiment dragged itself from Jack’s mind and he shook it free. 

“Don’t waste your breath. I’m not taking any kinda help from a cape,” snapped Miranda, then turned to Charlie with a smile. “It might be too late for  _ him _ , wolfpup all jaded and bitter, but there’s still a chance—”

“And now, we’re done with that,” said Jack firmly.

He grabbed the scruff of Charlie’s jacket and half-dragged, half-walked her out the door. The stupid door stuck again and he wrenched, harder. He didn’t bother shutting it behind them. Rhys trailed after them.

Charlie righted herself, dignity fluffed. “What was that about?”

“Fresh meat,” said Rhys. “Recruiting season is open. Everyone wants everyone to join their side.”

“What’s up with Nines?” asked Charlie. “The  _ Vampire _ —” She took a sideways glance at Rhys. “I thought Monroe liked him?”

“In a way, probably,” said Jack. The two were probably alike in every way that didn’t count. “ ‘Respect’ is more like it, though.”

Jack didn’t like the streets, especially the ones around the Last Round. He second-guessed every rat and crow. There were too many critters this late for it to be anything other than Animalism eyes. He pulled them down another side street. It dumped them into the Fashion District, gleaming bright names of designers and luxury brands in stores that had once been factories and warehouses. More importantly, people. Late night shoppers with heavy bags brushed by, close enough to smell.

“You think Monroe will deal with the Sabbat?” asked Rhys.

Jack bristled against the scent and shrugged. “Probably.” Probably if he knew it would get him what he wanted. “He was part of that big dust-up in New York, against the Sabbat.”

Rhys chuckled low. “Maybe you shouldn’t mention that around Anarchs, that he worked with the Cam.”

“Fuck, I’d work with the Cam if I got to tell the San Bern Sabbat to fuck off,” said Jack, laughing.

Rhys didn’t. “Might just come to that, you know. If we can’t take care of it in-house, there’s an archon up in the Valley who will dangle his help like a fucking carrot.”

Jack stopped walking. “What?”

“Yeah. Heard it on the grapevine, that Edwin Swent’s in town backing that Valley Prince. He could one-v-one that Sabbat outpost like  _ that _ and save our lives — oh, and he’ll just need our absolute submission and for us to lick his boots clean.” He smiled slyly.

Charlie nodded, like she knew what an archon was. Between the Cobweb and the  _ Vampire Dictionary _ , Jack had a hard time keeping track what she did know.

“I’m hungry,” said Jack shortly. “Need some of that post-feeding clarity before I think about that stuff.”

“Skid Roe’s a few blocks over,” offered Rhys.

That wasn’t exactly what he had in mind, though Jack wasn’t exactly picky.

Charlie played with the cat on her shoulder, staring off into space, though she looked like she’d follow them.

Even when Jack had run with the Last Round, he didn’t like feeding in Skid Roe. The whole area felt like a big shining mirror aimed right at him. When he took a nice girl on a few dates, or helped Melissa’s kid with his homework, he felt like it was payment for any other service. Here, they were predators, struggling to survive, just like that small time dealer in the corner.

Mattresses, tents, and bedsheets blocked most of the sidewalk and filled the alleys. Homeless and addicts curled in nests of newspaper and broken bottles like birds. Trash and a festering smell of stale human and garbage assaulted his nose. Murals and graffiti gave colour to the grey life and cobalt-blue tarps and tents. Maybe the homeless knew that fire barrels kept away vampires. Maybe, even in LA, the winter chill and wet air got to them.

Rhys came here plenty, it seemed. A couple knew him by name. One even hugged him. He led Charlie among them, exchanging names, catching up.

Whittling on the edge of his mind, Jack felt an animal. Dog, maybe. A skinny blond stray, patchy with mange, curled on a couch next to a young blonde woman. She sat away from the fires, though under a mess of worn grey blankets.

“What’s up?” he asked.

The dog raised his head questioningly and sniffed. _ Any food? _

The blonde woman glared. “What’s it to you? Looking to buy or sell?”

Jack dug into his pockets. “What would… sixty-four dollars and… sixteen cents buy me?”

She smiled a brown ruin. “What are you looking for, sugar? Come here.”

She scooted over on the couch and patted the wet beige leather next to her. Jack sat, feeling more and more terrible.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She didn’t answer for a long time, instead petting the dog. “Emily. This is Frank.”

“Heya, Frank,” said Jack softly. “How you doing?”

The dog felt his words, touching deeper than normal humans, and he growled, low and long.  _ How come you do that too? _

Jack handed over the money to Emily, still looking at Frank.

“Now, now, Frankie, behave.” She bit off the gloves to better count the money.

Jack lurched to his feet. When he was a fledgling, he had frenzied real bad. Ugly, tearing down the street like a rabid wolf. Casualties included two fire escapes, a late-night fruit stand, and he had knocked down an old woman. Not ate her. She did break a hip, though, which had snapped Jack out of it. He had helped her get to the hospital.

Emily had the same marks Jack had had. Hands covered with ink black hair coarse as spines, and fingernails lengthened and curved into black claws. Just as dexterous as human hands, but the mark of frenzy lingered. Days, weeks. 

_ Vampire.  _

Emily snarled and Frank responded. He snapped at Jack, barking and slavering before latching onto his leg. Loath to hurt the beast, Jack shook his leg — not hard enough. Frank dug in, savouring the sweet taste of vampire blood as he savaged the jeans.

Emily attacked, pinning Jack to the ground. “Stupid cur,” she bit. Fangs grew. “LA belongs to the Sabbat.”

Jack slipped from her grip, his bones wrenching and croaking until she tried to hold onto a black cougar. The world sharpened into focus. Frank whined and Jack pounced, muscles oiled like a machine. The pair rolled across the garbage-ridden road, until Jack managed to curl his jaws around Frank’s neck. He spun around, the blonde dog whining and dangling from his mouth.

Emily whimpered and raised her hands. “Please. Don’t do this. He’s all—”

The fight had attracted some middling attention, but a couple more peeled from inside tents. Like Emily, the men hadn’t been taken care of in life, and had been sired into the Sabbat.

“Waste of Blood, girl,” spat one of them. “It’s just a dog. There’s a thousand where he came from.”

“No!” she cried, rounding on them.

Jack growled, spying down the way where Rhys and Charlie had gone. Rhys. A terrible idea came to him, that maybe Rhys knew Sabbat nested here, that he had planned this, got them into trouble for the fun of it. Fucking Malkavians.

“I think—” said one of the men, but Jack would never learn what he thought.

“You don’t, actually,” said a cold voice. “Think, that is. You actually haven’t thought a night in your miserable life.”

Rhys. His voice lilt, dancing slightly, with a strong heady inflection. Jack knew enough by Monroe to know Dominate when he saw it, but it wasn’t Dominate. No eye contact, not even their attention.

The one he had talked to fell slack. His eyes blanked and jaw hung open, like a walking empty doll.

The other shook his friend. “What the fuck did you—”

“Oh, and, spiders!” added Rhys with a manic grin. “Both you get spiders. Big red hairy ones. Watch out, they’re poisonous and like to tap dance! Only laughing will scare them away. Know any good jokes?”

Both the Sabbat screamed bloody murder, which rose into a shrieking senseless laugh as they took in Rhys’ words. Took them in as fact, reality, and ran away from what only they could see.

Fucking Malkavians. Jack’s eyes widened in wonder and horror.

“Run, you dumbass,” said Rhys, running past him and into another alley. “Unless you’re actually a wild cougar, in which case, ‘nice kitty’.”

Charlie wrenched out of Rhys’ grip to turn back to him. “Run, Jack!”

Jack dropped Frank, who limped back to Emily, and ran for it. On four legs, he quickly outstripped the pair. They needed something else.

“Fucking Malkavians!” howled someone far behind.

Jack could sprout wings, but Charlie wasn’t there yet. Rhys either, he doubted. Downtown was full of nooks and crannies. Forgotten alleyways with dumpsters and backdoors that always hung open for shady deals or small businesses trying to let in a refreshing breeze. LA had been an ever-expanding city and there were old places in it.

The Sabbat had almost caught up. Angry voices and angrier feet stormed after them, only one or two alleys over. And then, Jack heard the caw of an eagle. The Gangrel, Emily, soared above to tell her partners where they had gone. 

Jack found two legs again and jerked open a chain link gate. The padlock shattered. “This way,” he called.

“Where the fuck are we going?” asked Rhys, but he seemed happy to follow anyway.

Jack broke in the back of an old restaurant. Very old. It had used to be a speakeasy, long before Jack’s time, and it was still kinda suave in that old-fashioned sort of way. Velvet and wood worn by fond memories. Dozens of humans lingered in the local place over drinks.

Jack shut the backdoor behind them, for all the good it would do. Where was it? Down the hall of offices, to the left, right. The left door. Jack opened it, expectant, but a mop and bunch of restaurant-size toilet paper stared at him. Fine. Right door.

“Rhys,” he whispered, “unless you got night vision, just hold onto one of us. Charlie, get the door.”

When Charlie shut it behind them, the tunnel was pitch black. Only a faint red glow from Jack’s and Charlie’s eyes remained. Rusting pipes lined walls of chipped and faded green paint. Dust choked the air with every step.

“What was that back there?” asked Jack. Even quiet, his voice bounced off the cement walls.

“Dementation,” hissed Rhys. “Dement’s  _ normal _ for Malks. Subset of Dominate.  _ This _ is definitely, totally, one-hundred-percent  _ not _ normal. What the fuck is this?”

“Bootlegging tunnels,” said Jack. “Back in the sixties, Nines planned on using them as an escape hatch out of Downtown. Mob used to use them for smuggling.” The tunnels continued, calm and black and identical, for a couple hundred yards sloping downhill before he broke the silence again. “Did you know Sabbat would be at Skid Roe?”

“What?” snapped Rhys. “Get off it, of course not.”

“Guess we all should’ve known,” said Charlie from the back. “The Garcia girls were saying that the Sabbat’s coming west.”

“That’s Nines’ problem,” said Rhys. “Remember? If it’s not your problem—”

“—it’s not a problem,” she finished. “But this, very clearly,  _ is _ .”

“Not if we stay in Silver Lake — oh, sorry,  _ Switzerland _ ,” he said snidely.

“Switzerland’s Monroe’s whole domain,” said Jack, undisturbed. “Silver Lake, Hollywood both hills and West, Los Feliz.”

Charlie was right. The Sabbat would be a problem.

The tunnels opened up into what had once been an attempt at building a subway system. Jack figured that was before the builders found out LA got earthquakes. A couple of support beams had cracked and fragments of cement littered in flakes. Sometimes homeless or Nosferatu found their way down here, but it was quiet and empty most of the time.

And also directionless.

“This is pretty cool,” said Charlie, spinning around. “You could, like, host giant vampire ragers in here.”

Jack led them deeper into the tunnels and, eventually, found one that sloped upwards again. The door out had been locked, but that was no big deal, and they burst back out into the cold night air. Somewhere. An alley in the middle of “who knew”, at the corner of “fuck all” and “nowhere”.

But there were no Sabbat.

Jack breathed fresh air. Monroe would want to know about those Sabbat, and that Garcia’s kids were so willing to look the other way for Charlie. Now, though, they needed to call a cab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack is a lot smarter than he (and most people) give him credit for. As far as Nines goes, he's entirely right, but is the only one who sees it. Losing Skelter to a cult also gave him a perspective. This interpretation of Nines comes from one of my all-time favourite fandom interpretations, which can be found here: https://brujahinaskirt.tumblr.com/post/623647486574247936/missn11-says-ask-and-ye-shall-receive-fellow .


	16. Expectations

Zari had lived among the swanlings for twenty years. And  _ still _ , she couldn’t stand Jeanette’s chipper, maniacal nonsense. She didn’t sound any much different than Nita on a good night, but there was something creepy about her. The way she embraced Zari like a long-long sister disturbed her like nothing else. Like the girl knew something she didn’t. 

With a few more murders, Ashley managed to bankrupt the nightclub Lush and scoop it up at a bargain for Jeanette. Neither wasted any time making the Lemonade Stand. Though, really, the colour inside was more Mountain Dew. Nita and Blake both sometimes came down to play handyman, painting walls, or  _ encouraging _ the workers by flashing fangs or Presence. Zari watched from a distance. When Aisha turned up, it always took a little prodding but, then, she would, too.

Zari never stayed long. She had no name for the hollow feeling, but for that reason alone she didn’t like it.

Besides, she had work to do now.

Charlie sat in the corner of Blue Moon’s basement. The coffee table was covered in construction paper, glitter glue, and duct tape.

“Zari,” called Charlie before she could stop her. “Hey, I meant to ask you, about my article next month — what’s wrong?”

Zari smiled and sat next to her. “Nothing. You look like you’ve been hella busy.”

She glanced down at the crafty mess. “Yeah. Well. I got a job from Monroe, no more leeching. Not that kind, at least.” She smiled briefly, entertained by her own joke, and fangs poked down. “Peacekeeper of Blue Moon and Silver Lake and… maybe, Switzerland. Maybe I could get a pay raise.” Charlie attached the duct tape star to her already full jacket. It hung crooked, too large, and looked exactly like a silver sheriff’s badge. If sheriff’s badges had glitter glue and sequins. 

Zari remembered being in this same room in October, the first time Monroe had brought her, a timid and jittery fledgling who somehow managed to find the fangs to curse out Ashley.

“Sweet gig,” she said ironically. “What was that about an article?”

“Oh. So, Rhys Wilson wants to start a D&D group, I think I mentioned it, and he asked if I could write up an ad for it. Maybe drum up support. It would be cool if we could get a bunch of groups going, like, bind the community together?”

Her smile tightened. “Sounds like a… real nerdy game for bonafide losers.”

“Or Malkavians,” offered Charlie with a smile. “Come on, I promise the piece won’t go on too long.”

Zari sighed. “Fine. Three hundred words, not one more.”

Charlie leaned back, content, and pulled her legs up onto the couch, cross-legged. “So, did Ashley piss in your blood pack again?”

Zari didn’t know what to say. A lump itched her throat. She reached out and patted Charlie’s knee. “Nothing so interesting.”

Without another word, Zari turned back and left as fast as she could without arousing suspicion. Even so, Charlie followed her out into the parking lot, suspicious.

“Someone pissed somewhere,” said Charlie after her.

Zari swallowed the lump and dug for her keys. “I was just heading home.”

“That’s why you came downstairs? Nuh-uh. Tell me what’s happening.”

The headlights flashed as the doors unblocked, but as Zari opened the door, Charlie’s hand shut it again. Zari growled, but all she found was a pair of wide moon-like eyes full of concern.

“When we all came back with the Hollowmen,” said Charlie quietly, “you said you were going to Westside. Something special over there?”

Zari pulled at the door and Charlie’s hand slid off the car. She could leave. Zari sighed and shut the door again. “Monroe and I talked,” she said. Every inch of her said it was a stupid idea. All those rumours, that Malkavians were all a hivemind — what if they were true? What if Jeanette or Therese heard it? “We decided I could do a lotta good by heading to Westside and trying to enter that prince’s court.”

Charlie’s mouth slipped open. “ _ What _ ? That’s crazy, Zari. What about the zine? What about  _ us _ ?”

“I’m taking the  _ Estate _ with me,” she said. “I’ll keep printing it, Ashley’ll keep distributing it like the good little mule he is. Give him whatever you want to write. He’ll get it to me.”

“You’re ‘going’ going, then?” she asked in a small voice. “You’re talking about… spying?

Zari nodded shortly.

“Wow. That…” She shook her head. “Sounds dangerous. Are you guys really sure?”

She nodded again. “Of course. I’ve been squaring things with Jeanette Voerman. Her sister’s the prince’s seneschal — that’s like, vice president.” Ashley had done his best to give her a crash course in Camarilla politics and titles, but Zari felt her brain leak them out every other night. “Soon, someone’s gonna break the cold war with LA proper. Once that happens, we’ll miss our opportunity to infiltrate. Monroe’s got an in into the Valley Prince. Jack knows Nines. I know the Voermans.”

Zari didn’t need to admit that one of her earliest memories was Therese Voerman diablerizing her sire for attempting to usurp her.

Charlie scratched the back of her neck, like Jack often did when his brain overheated. “Well, I guess that sounds like a good opportunity. Just, make sure you come back, huh?”

Zari blinked, thrown off guard. “I sure as hell plan on it. When we win, I’ll be there.”

“When we win,” Charlie echoed, discouraged. Her eyes were shiny and distant when they found Zari again. She opened and shut her mouth before coughing away her unsaid words. “When’re you going?”

“Tonight.”

“Oh. Like, right now?”

“Soon.”

“Oh.”

Charlie stuck her hands in her pockets. “Have a good time, then. Stay safe. Be good.”

Zari slid into the car and shut the door. She watched Charlie skulk back into Blue Moon like the denim-clad club rat she was. The lump grew again.

That wouldn’t do.

Zari swallowed it, harder, and drove. She had an arrangement with Jeanette. Already, Zari had managed to covertly bring up how dissatisfied she was with Monroe, how she had been thinking about moving to Westside for a long while, but, now, of course… Jeanette always understood, plastered over her worries with seduction and convoluted metaphors about Clorox and barnyard animals.

Tonight, Jeanette promised that she’d send someone to pick up Zari at nine o’clock.

It was already past eight.

The Lemonade Stand smelled like fresh paint and fear. Just the way swanlings liked it. And there was no way to say that Aisha wasn’t a swanling-to-be. But she smiled. She leaned against the mirrored bar that was being installed and cooed over the workmen. Zari only caught the tail end, something about overtime and intestines. Then, Aisha jerked upright and stared wide-eyed, like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

For a moment, Zari was tempted to pretend she hadn’t seen Aisha. Every bone in her body screamed at her. Her daughter was not cruel. And, yet, Zari was beginning to accumulate evidence to the contrary.

“Can I get word, in the back?” asked Zari.

Sullen, Aisha followed her into the finished and mostly furnished offices. She collapsed into the chair, looking not unlike a bad kid who’d gotten sent to the principal’s office. Though, maybe, not many high school students wore off-the-shoulder, skin-tight Versace dresses.

“What?” asked Aisha. The word cracked like a whip.

Zari forced the words out. “Heard anything about your brother?”

She crossed her arms, sinking lower, like it was better to not think about things like that. It might’ve been easier, but Zari still wasn’t so sure it was better, exactly. Not anymore.

“Woke up,” said Aisha. “Few days ago. He didn’t see me. He just headed back home to Denise and the boys. Talked to his doctor, though. Nothing’s changed. Maybe six months. Maybe this last round works and it goes into remission and he gets to be there for his boys’ high school graduation. Who knows.”

“Still lives in Mar Vista, right? By the Santa Monica airport?”

Aisha smirked. “Forgot you were stalking us all this time.”

“Does he?”

“Yeah. Why? Gonna go pay him a visit?”

Zari sat next to Aisha. “I think it’d be nice if we were there at the end. No one’s gonna blame an end-of-life patient with a brain tumour for seeing his dead mom and sister.”

The last of Aisha’s growing confidence sagged and she held back tears, blinking hard to save her makeup. “This is… such shit. I thought shit couldn’t get worse when Noel got diagnosed, but… this…”

Zari sighed. “I know, baby.”

Aisha looked down at her hands like she saw them for the first time. “I don’t get it. Sometimes, I’m having the time of my life. Nothing’s wrong. And… then, it ends, because it’s gotta end and… it’s terrible. There are  _ bodies  _ and  _ blood  _ everywhere and — What — Why did I say those things to those men?” Her voice rose in pitch, frantic.

Zari pulled her into a hug. Despite the weeks, her braids were pristine. Perfect. Nita must’ve helped her redo them. A suave, devoted new ghoul to help them with their hair. Maybe he was even still alive. Her makeup was perfect. Her dress was perfect. And nothing was perfect. Everything was wrong. Until, one day, it wouldn’t be. Having fun with human toys wouldn’t bother her, feeding would just be bliss, and she would know she was a vampire and an evil creature the way she once took for granted being human.

Zari couldn’t do it. Couldn’t say what Nita and Delilah surely had. That it was all in good fun. Didn’t it make her happy? Vamps thrive on being, well,  _ vampy _ . It’s not your fault.

“It’s okay, baby,” she said thickly. “You just do what you gotta do, to keep on trucking. Don’t you look back. Once Noel’s gone, don’t you  _ ever _ look back. Not to humans, and crush that nagging little voice in your head like a bug.”

Aisha clung to her and managed to swallow her tears. “DeDe said you were gonna go to Westside, that Monroe did you wrong.”

Zari grimaced. It was the lie they had agreed on. That Monroe had gotten possessive of her when Ashley showed interest. Nothing could’ve been further than the truth. 

“Just, stick with Ashley,” said Zari. “Keep Noel in your prayers.”

Aisha sniffed, wincing at the taste. “I haven’t prayed in… feels like years.”

“I don’t think God listens to vampires. If He does, it’s not with anything like mercy, but Noel’s human.” Zari sighed. “He’ll listen.”

“I hope so,” she said, but her voice held none of it.

Aisha lay her head on Zari’s shoulder. She didn’t know how long they sat like that, quiet, mind empty. No pain in the past. No fear for the future. Only them, together. Zari wished it would never come to an end.

But it had to.

Reluctantly, Zari detangled herself from Aisha and stood, sighing. Behind them, silent as the grave, Ashley leaned in the door. His eyes met her impassively. He gave Aisha the voice Zari had come to expect from him, intimate and ironic.

“Babygirl, Nita and the girls are talking music for opening night. Mind bringing them a snack?”

Aisha didn’t smile and in fact only crumpled. Then, Zari felt the Presence, a whisper of psychic lips against hair. She wondered briefly if Aisha was wise enough to figure it out. Like the ones who came before her, Aisha leaned into Ashley’s artificial bliss as refuge from the red ruin of her life.

Aisha stood gracefully and had a delicate sly smile for Ashley as she passed. “Happy meal with a toy, coming right up. Did they want fries with that?”

“No, but I’m sure they’ll tip their waitress,” he said with a bite. Aisha giggled.

Ashley’s eyes lingered on her as she passed and he kicked the door shut behind him. The dionysian flirtation left him.

“Did you fang my daughter?” asked Zari, before realising she didn’t want the answer to the question. She knew Ashley well enough.

“No,” he said calmly. “Not yet.”

Perhaps she didn’t know him as well as she thought.

He analyzed her for minutes more, gentle cool eyes boring into her. That colour might’ve been radioactive and had the power to X-ray her. But she couldn’t look away.

“Why’re you doing this?” said Ashley softly. “No one’s sending you away. You have a home here.”

“I have to.”

He stepped closer. “You know, everywhere you run to, you’ll always find you got there first. Trust me. I know.”

“You don’t know a damn thing.” Zari crossed her arms and tore herself away from those eyes. Every wall she built was in vain.

“Stay here, childe,” said Ashley. “You’re not going to find anything in Westside beyond pain and suffering.”

He didn’t beg. That was beneath him. Instead, the overwhelming confidence, the almost thirty years she had spent next to him, more than twice as long as her own marriage and more vulnerable by far, hit harder than if he had fallen to his knees.

“I’ve sired six times,” he said, taking her hands. “Twice in New Orleans, Roger and Percy. And four times here, Blake, Velvet, Nita, and Delilah. And you and Aisha make seven and eight. I know every way every fledgling and neonate can try to escape who they are. Westside will burn you to ash.”

Zari ripped her hands away. “Good thing I’m a phoenix, then. Did Jeanette come?”

Ashley sighed. “Her sister did. The car’s waiting outside for you.”

Zari nodded shortly and brushed past him, shutting the door behind her. Therese Voerman was something she could deal with. A living calculator where you put social interactions in and power came out.

Outside, it had begun to rain again. Thick heavy drops. Even for winter, the weather had been unseasonable lately. Zari lingered under the overhang until she spotted the black town car.

The doors opened behind her and she smelled Ashley before she felt him. He pressed against her, his lips tight to her ear.

“If you have to do this, then remember what I told you,” he whispered. “ _ Polite _ . Worse than Garcia, than Abrams, than anything you’ve met. Expect everything you say can and will be used against you — without a court of law. Email me. Come by with Jeanette when she checks out the Stand. Every—”

Zari turned around and hugged him. Part of her didn’t want to let go, to continue to explore whatever they had reignited — what  _ Ashley _ had wanted to make right between them — but she couldn’t face it. He knew. He had understood, even if it upset him.

Ashley pulled her closer and she felt him murmur against her hair. “If you do something, do it right. Make me proud, baby.”

Zari stepped back before she did something stupid. Every inch of her brimmed with stupid energy. He extended an umbrella with a wry smile and walked her across the road. Her nails dug into his jacket. She didn’t know where she found the strength, but she watched herself, as though in a dream, open the car door, step inside, and settle into the luxury black interior as Ashley and Therese exchanged banal pleasantries. 

He shut the door. Locks clicked. Heavy drops  _ plunked _ off the roof, obscuring any clear vision of outside. As the car slid away, Zari watched as Ashley stood in the middle of the Santa Monica strip. He didn’t leave until after they turned a corner.

Therese Voerman, similarly, had her eyes fixated on the window. Twin sister to Jeanette, she had the same lithe curvaceous body, but wore a stiff and shapeless black skirt suit over it. It weren’t the clothes of a highly paid secretary, as much eye candy as employee, but a boss. A bun pulled flaxen hair away from a pale pinched face, free of makeup. Thick black-rimmed glasses rested on her nose.

Zari licked her lips. Windshield wipers  _ zwump-zwumped _ across the glass.

“Thank you for the opportunity, ma’am,” she said. “The Swans have done good business with the Asylum brand—”

“Do you have any you would consider family, Zari?” asked Therese. Her voice was winter, every word an icicle. “I do. My sister was Embraced by my sire’s own twin brother. Sometimes, she leans into the Malkavian image and is lead astray by the Cobweb. Among the clan, we call such unfortunates spiders. I try to leash her to the better path, for her own good. I love my sister. For this love, I’ve built our empire. Power has protected us. It is for the love and not for the empire that you sit here now.” Therese turned and Zari started at the intensity. “Jeanette believes in second chances. She believes you are here because you want to leave the Anarchs. I am doing her a monumental favour by taking you to my prince.”

“I appreciate it, ma’am. Jeanette is a good friend of mine.” Truly, if Zari didn’t have to see that clown-faced simpering nutter for the rest of her nights she would count herself lucky. But. Polite.

The corner of Therese’s mouth twitched. “So I have heard.”

The car slid along the base of the hills, though the Angels Wasteland grew smaller by the night. Jeanette was full of bright gossip, about how  _ cool _ LaCroix was, how they had been whittling away at the gangs, making headway as far east as Beverlywood. The last raider gangs pressed tight like sardines and, supposedly, had brokered peace with each other to maintain their way of life against Monroe and LaCroix.

Sooner than Zari would’ve liked, the car navigated smoothly through Santa Monica. Downtown was full of life, both wanted and unwanted. Tourists and trust fund babies glided by sodden hobos. The dark of the alleys hid more than just crime, though there was plenty of that as well. For those who wanted it, Westside had always been an easy life. Full of Malkavians and Toreadors, both a dense nest of complicated family trees, they thrived in the art and club scenes. Those with heads for business had seen Westside boom with tourism the last twenty years, manipulating and benefiting from the influx of cash and blood.

Zari had half-expected to stop at Asylum, but the car continued past the seedier areas of downtown, past the darkened storefronts of luxury brands and art galleries, and into the valley of skyscrapers that made up the financial district. Of course, Ventrue. Zari’s only experience with the clan was Monroe and Fortier. Despite her fondness for Monroe, neither of them exactly filled her with hope.

When the car came to a stop, at last, the driver hurriedly found an umbrella and opened Therese’s door first. She stepped out under the cover. Zari waited another minute but, clearly, wasn’t gonna get the same treatment. Swallowing the bitter pill, she leapt from the car and ran between the drops to wait at the stairs.

Therese chuckled, her eyes bright with amusement. “Toreadors do have such charming uses for Celerity,” she said.

“I can hardly introduce myself to the prince looking like a drowned rat.”

“Hardly.”

Under the cover of the overhang, the driver quietly dismissed himself, like he had never been there. The car pulled off into the dark and rainy night.

The building was one of dozens, almost identical. Cuttingly exact grey brick stones flanked by post-modern onyx statues. The doors opened into a lobby that would’ve been more at home in a bank. Smoky marble walls, pillars, and floors glowered down in their emptiness. A security desk stood to the side, manned by a very overweight man crammed into his blue uniform. To call him “balding” would have been generous and “handsome” an outright lie.

Zari, though, couldn’t tear her eyes away from the script glowing on the wall behind the guard. Electric blue and written as a signature for all the humans to see: LaCroix. 

“Ehh, just go right on up, Ms Voerman. Mr LaCroix’s burning the midnight oil. I swear, the man never sleeps.”

“Thank you, Chuck.”

Zari managed to follow Therese, lagging only a few steps behind, as she ascended the stairs to the score of elevators. A directory listed all the offices and businesses. Did they  _ all _ belong to LaCroix?

Therese slid a key into the button for the penthouse. The elevator took them all the way to the top. Vertigo stole Zari’s breath and stomach. Just when she thought they could go no higher, the doors opened. It was less penthouse than office, wallpapered in gold fleur-de-lis and ivory crown molding. An antique desk dominated the room, but it was unattended. A caged fireplace roared in the corner. Not caged enough to prevent the fear that tore up Zari’s throat, but she regained control of herself.

A man in a dark suit stared out the far wall of windows. French doors opened onto a balcony, letting in the smell and sound of the rain. Droplets streaked down the glass.

“Thank you very much, Therese,” he said. Not unlike Ashley, he had the gift of curving every word to his arrogance. The accent he spoke with was a butchered mangle of English and American. “I would like a moment with the neonate.”

“If you wish, Your Highness.” Therese left by the elevator and Zari realised with a jolt that there were only two exits: the elevator and the long way down.

The unbearable silence stretched further. Zari didn’t feel right taking a seat without being offered or speaking without being addressed. God. What a new world.

“Come here, childe. Tell me what you see.”

Zari crossed the room uncertainly. The view looked out, not over the ocean, but Los Angeles. Thousands of lights streaked with the rain. Far below them, cars drove on. The silhouette of Nines’ Downtown cut a familiar shape. The view was stunning. But he didn’t ask her to just relay it back to him. Zari thought fast.

“I see the ruins of MacNeil’s Anarch experiment,” she said. “The egomaniacal Nines Rodriguez, Baron of Downtown, where he plays God. The wild raider gangs between here and West Hollywood. And, over there, UCLA, the domain of a much-loved Malkavian who was murdered senselessly only weeks ago.”

“Hmph.”

“What do you see, Your Highness?” The title did not come natural to Zari and she worried she stumbled over it, but LaCroix did not seem to mind.

“Something long denied to the young of our kind. Opportunity. And how the Anarchs have squandered it. Come, let me look at you.”

He turned from the window and analyzed Zari closely but indifferently, as though she were a particularly interesting bug on his window. She found herself wondering if she had chosen right. Gone were the ripped designer jeans and off-the-shoulder sweaters. The black turtleneck stayed on both shoulders, form fitting but not obscene. Grey pleated slacks hung over her boots, toes and crease pointed sharp. Down to the trench coat and bag, it was all very basic, very wealthy, and very professional. Camarilla, maybe.

LaCroix was almost exactly what she had been expecting. A third accent clung to the edge of his letters, his inflection and  _ th _ ’s. French, maybe. Too much time spent crossing the Atlantic had mangled it beyond recognition. He had been handsome, once. Wavy dark blonde hair, strong features, and a tailored black Armani suit, but his vacant and unfeeling blue eyes robbed him of whatever attraction he once had. When he didn’t move, his chalky grey skin could’ve been stone. His chin was too high, his shoulders too square. The resemblance to Monroe, superficially as older vampires, hit her.

No crown, though. Zari was a little disappointed in that. A little gold circlet would look nice.

“Sit,” he said suddenly, gesturing to the desk.

As the wind outside picked up, he shut the French doors and sat opposite her.

“Therese Voerman is a very good acquaintance of mine,” he said cordially. “Her sister has always been… interesting, and when she brought to me a proposition of inducting a Toreador Anarch I have to say, I was intrigued. You are not what I had expected.”

Zari smiled. “You’re exactly what I expected.”

LaCroix furrowed his brow, confused, and she felt like she had just put her foot through the thin ice. A chill shot up her.

“Forgive me, Your Highness.”

“No, please continue. What have you been told of me?”

“Nothing, Your Highness.”

“What did you expect, then, that has been so accurately represented?”

LaCroix leaned further on the desk, interlocking his fingers. On one, he wore a ring. It was hard to miss, thick and ugly iron. A couple more symbols decorated it, but Zari only recognised the sword-and-scepter of Clan Ventrue. And a number. 1815.

Zari took a deep breath. “I expected, upon arriving, to meet a Ventrue of considerable age, though not an elder. Though Los Angeles and the Anarchs within are young, the customary stillness of the grave and the year on your ring say I am correct. You are quite worldly, Your Grace, and have traveled extensively to search for your own opportunity. In that, you have accumulated allies and welcomed diversity of clans and backgrounds. I may not be educated in military history, though I can tell by your bearing you have served with distinction and it has served you as you sought a position to codify your own rule.”

Half of it was spit-balling, but as LaCroix’s mouth quirked into a smile, Zari couldn’t help but feel she was right.

“I served throughout the Napoleonic Wars, honourably,” he said. “I did as was commanded, though I scarce ever agreed with it, and I waited. Surely, my outstanding merit earned me my due. A command of my own? Freedom from the yoke of the officers? My reward was death in the Battle of Waterloo. And, alas, death often mirrors life. As such, the Camarilla has taken the place of my dignified officers who do not recognise talent or reward exemplary service. I have learned rewards must be taken. What has your life and death taught you, neonate?”

Zari didn’t feel like spilling quite so much to this prince. After his recount of military battle, her own breathing days as a secretary and mother felt dull as dishwater. “Nothing is fair, Your Highness,” she said instead. “Life is cruel and unlife only more. A fish does not need to know water to long for it in her heart. I never had a name for what I wanted.”

“And what is that?”

“A place to belong,” she said earnestly, piecing the truth with her prepared lies. “My sire abandoned me. I was fostered by a degenerate Toreador, who I escaped by the help of a Ventrue who has only proven himself no better.”

LaCroix appraised her differently. “And now, too, you must escape him. And so, you come to me. A clever little rebel rose who has never said ‘sir’ in her life.”

“I can learn,” she said. “I’m a fast learner and I could offer much to your domain. I built my reputation among the Anarchs by being indispensable. If anyone wanted to get the word out, they came to me, my zine — ah, magazine.  _ The Fifth Estate _ .”

LaCroix smiled but it didn’t touch his eyes. “Like the estates of the realm. Clergy, nobility, merchants, commoners, and the press. Very clever.” He stood and walked around his desk. Unsure whether to stand with him, Zari froze as he stood beside her chair. “What do you think you know about the Camarilla?”

“Enough to know I want to be here,” she said. She licked her lips. “I know the prince holds a court. Justice or sheriff, herald, seneschal, keeper of elysiums, and the council of primogen who represent the major clans and interests.”

“Elysia,” he corrected. “The plural of elysium is elysia.” His gaze rooted her to the spot. “You may have potential. You are right. I accumulated allies in my decades of travel. The Voerman sisters, my dutiful sheriff, but I did not come with a full court. I came in hopes of absorbing native Anarchs into the Camarilla structure, if they showed themselves worthy of the merit.”

Zari blinked. “Sir—”

“I will not lie,” said LaCroix. He raised a hand for her silence. “Herald is a dreadful position and one every Camarilla ladder-climber sees as his first rung. It is little more than a glorified accountant, including managing the ledger of boons and decimating the royal word. However, it is a first rung, and a title which changes hands more frequently than any other.”

Zari stood. LaCroix straightened himself up taller, though they were the same height. “Opportunity,” she said with a sly smile, scarce believing it.

He returned the smile, stiff and empty and unnatural. “Opportunity,” he agreed. He extended a hand to shake. “Though it may seem offensive to Anarch sensibilities, it would do well to shed them immediately. Part of the herald’s responsibility is to announce and introduce their prince.”

She took it. “I’m just Zari, Your Highness. If you must, Zari Swan.” She hadn’t taken the name in years, but it felt right to settle back at the end of her name, better than risking what remained of her blood family with her surname.

“Sebastian LaCroix of the Clan of Kings, Ninth of the Line of Tiamat, Prince of Los Angeles, Warden of Westside. Repeat, if you would.”

Zari raised an eyebrow. “Do you want a ‘hear ye’ at the start of that?”

LaCroix glowered, only easing up a touch when she repeated it back to him. “You would do well to learn there is time and place for humour.” He returned to the desk. “Before you begin publishing your magazine in my domain, I want to review it myself. If I am ever unavailable, Therese Voerman serves as my seneschal. My voice is her voice, my hands are her hands.”

“Of course, Your Highness,” is what she said, but Zari thought again of the inflection he had when he spoke of Therese. Something in her eye must’ve aroused his suspicion.

“Something else, Miss Herald?” he asked, tense.

“Therese Voerman is a fine woman,” said Zari appreciatively.

LaCroix settled. “Yes. Yes, she rather is.”

The look dared her to say something else, but Zari had her answer even if the high and mighty prince wouldn’t outright admit to nepotism. And all that garbage about merit, too.

“Is there anything else, sir?” she asked, eager to leave the office.

“No, that will be all,” he said crisply. He reached for the phone on the desk and dialed. Zari heard the pager system answer him. “An agent of mine, Mercurio, will meet you at the bottom. He will situate yourself in Westside.”

Zari blinked. “Thank you, Your Highness.”

“No. Thank you, Miss Herald.”

She was in it now. As the elevator descended, Zari felt a dawning horror seize over her like a vise. But there was excitement there, too. There was no turning back.


	17. Dungeons & Dragons

Character creation took a couple of nights. Charlie couldn’t even complain, though. Rhys and her holed up in the basement corner with thick tomes and a bucket of dice. Drinks kept coming and Charlie couldn’t remember laughing so much in years. The more time she spent with him, the more she felt her sire press against the Cobweb. A familiar comforting force, wild friendly energy. A psychic golden retriever.

Then, they caught the eye of Copper. The kid pulled up a chair awkwardly, but Rhys folded him in. And then, Orion and Midnight. Midnight used to play, as a human, and fast explained the game to her oblivious new boyfriend. Orion had a perpetual expression of  _ yikes _ and waved off the fantasma. “I’ll just be a fighter,” he said. “Let me hit stuff.”

And so, the party was swiftly built. A party ready to take down Count Strahd von Zarovich. An elven-vampire ranger with a completely useless house-cat familiar, played duo by Charlie and Oreo. Copper’s human-vampire warlock, secretly sworn to a darklord of Ravenloft. Midnight played an elven-vampire cleric of the dark goddess Shar, who dragged around her half-useless, half-orc, half-vampire fighter called Chad.

Already ready to finally start, Charlie and Rhys had gotten used to the attraction they got in Blue Moon. Some started to treat it like their favourite show. Thao and Lionel, the other Deathsingers, watched from a distance.

When Jesse sat down, Rhys only glared. “No.”

“No? What you mean ‘no’? I haven’t said anything.”

Rhys slammed the book. “I mean, this is my game and I’m not having Lasombra on our table.”

“You saying I’m not good enough to play…” She sneered and waved a hand. “Make believe and dice?”

Rhys glared. “Not when you say it like  _ that _ . And, we don’t need Lasombra kind of trouble.”

Jesse’s eyes scoured the circle. Copper and Orion were very interested in the ceiling, while Midnight picked blood from under her nails.

“Really?” asked Jesse in a very different voice. So unlike her, small and hurt, like the kid picked last for dodgeball.

“You can stay,” said Charlie.

Rhys snorted.

“Come on,” she insisted. “We can wait one more night while we build Jesse a character.”

Jesse smiled and it was like the clouds parted. Charlie’s smile fluttered as she reached for the book.

It didn’t take long to make her a rogue. A few drinks later and the tenseness vanished under a thick blanket of excitement.

Rhys pulled his stack of notes from his bag and hid behind a cardboard screen. It showed a deep blue castle twined with ivy and crumbling down the mountainside.

“Most nights in the kingdom of Barovia,” said Rhys in a low voice, “are dark and stormy. Lightning cracks and lights. Trees tremble. Rivers overflow their banks. And there would be nobody there to see. Barovia is a wild land. Peasant towns stand as isolated candle flames in a world populated by monsters and darkness. A hundred years ago, the last freelords of Barovia rose against the count, and they were crushed by the count’s own progeny. A legion of undead, of bats turned to man met—”

“And women,” said Midnight.

Rhys sighed. “—bats turned to men and women met the freelords in battle. The freelords and all their armies perished. In the chaos, some of the count’s footsoldiers fled. Some even survived. You are those survivors, a century since spent making your own lives in the nights across other lands and kingdoms, and yet now you are drawn back to your blood’s homeland. Most nights in the kingdom of Barovia are dark and stormy. Tonight is a night unlike any other. Tonight, the childer of Count Strahd have returned and, in the clear skies above, the stars and gods are watching carefully.”

A chill went down Charlie’s spine and she could see she wasn’t the only one.

Orion rose his hand. “Question. So, what Generation are we? Or, is that not a thing in this game?”

Rhys considered it. “Ul-Grog wouldn’t know.”

Copper consulted his page. “I’ve got three ranks in Arcane Knowledge. Does that help?”

The first night, they never got out of the creepy inn Rhys dropped them into. The peasants of a land ruled by a vampiric tyrant of course knew vampires when they saw them. Everyone but Jesse and Copper got imprisoned in the cellar, as the peasants argued whether to just kill them or hand them over to the count.

Copper had a good talk with his patron, who seemed to be an old woman who smoked a cigar and said, “good luck, my boy” a lot. Jesse went on a bit of an assassining spree, but only got captured herself. Charlie took control of her familiar for a little bit and was just about to roll to steal the key, but then the real Oreo jumped up on the table and knocked over the dice.

“Hey, I got enough,” said Charlie, grinning. 

“Difficulty twenty-five,” said Rhys.

“Yeah. The cat has a plus-four racial bonus to stealth, a Dexterity modifier of plus-two, and I rolled nineteen.”

“Rolled a sixteen,” said Rhys, pointing to the die.

“Yeah, but  _ before _ Oreo rolled overtop it was a nineteen.” Charlie petted Oreo, who gave a solid  _ mrppt _ . And he kept her secret. Like a good kitty. Very good kitty.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Really-really?”

“Of course.”

“Swear that it was a nineteen.”

Charlie glanced up and met Rhys’ dancing hazel eyes. “Swear, hand on heart, stake me to the sun and pull out my fangs if I tell a lie, I rolled a nineteen. Now, let me steal the key.”

If Rhys raised his eyebrow any higher, it would be in his hairline. “Alright,” he allowed. “But we have to pick it up next time—”

“Are you kidding me?” demanded Copper.

“It’s almost four and I’m not about to spend the day here,” said Rhys, groaning as he packed up his stuff in a hurry. “Great first session. Maybe we’ll actually not die right away.”

Midnight snorted. “Yeah, Jess, I was worried when you went up to that barkeeper.”

Jesse glared softly. “He asked why we wanna sleep the day in the cellars. What was I supposed to tell him?”

“Maybe not, ‘We’re vampires’?” said Charlie, grinning.

“Shut up.”

Copper mimicked Jesse and the barkeeper. “ ‘We’re vampires.’ ‘Oh, no way. I’m a vampire hunter.’ ‘No, you aren’t.’ ‘Yeah, I am.’ ”

The table howled with laughter at that once more before Rhys, persistently and pointedly, herded them upstairs and in the general direction of the front door with promises to play again the night after next. Charlie hadn’t felt how much she had had to drink until she tried to not knock over any tables. Lucky for them, Blue Moon was all but empty. 

Charlie grabbed the hem of Rhys’ jacket before he could head out.

“Thanks,” she said. 

He raised a lithe eyebrow. “For what? Letting you have that nineteen you were clearly bullshitting or letting Jesse play?”

“Both.”

Rhys dodged her sincerity. “She hasn’t caused problems yet. At least, not problems I was expecting.”

“I mean.” Charlie lost her words and sighed. “Everyone got along. We were all happy. You know? Thanks, for that.”

His smile softened and he pulled her into a half hug, landing a kiss on her forehead. “Anytime, kid.”

The feel of her sire’s fondness lingered long after he left, a pulsing migraine at the front of the Cobweb. It felt like friendship, thick and cloying like a cloud. She wished Zari could give her the same assurances. She hadn’t heard from her since. Charlie could probably go pester Rubio, maybe Monroe, and get answers. But she didn’t know if she really super  _ wanted _ those answers. They might not be good.

Charlie crawled back in the elevator and hit the button for the top floor. Rhys was right. Getting late, almost sunrise.

And there, where he seemed to live, was Monroe at his desk. Charlie raised a hand in silent greeting. She was used to him being lost in his work or thoughts, giving her only a late  _ good day _ before she went to bed. This time, he was more awake, though he didn’t look any happier.

Charlie dropped herself into the chair opposite him. “Sup?”

Monroe grimaced and, like everything with him, Charlie realised it was actually very serious and she should probably go sleep off her drink.

He wagered a smile. “It’s Sabbat. Jack told me you and him met them Downtown. Until I’ve dealt with them, don’t go there again.”

“Am I grounded?” said Charlie, half outraged.

“I just don’t want you coming back in an urn.”

She snorted. “Thanks, Dad.”

The word just slipped out of her. It left her confused and cold. Should’ve been colder, sadder. Her dad was a vague memory, out of the picture since she was a little kid, even after her mom had died and left her with Bella. Bella. 

But Monroe smiled. It completely transformed his face. He nodded to himself, privately pleased. Charlie couldn’t help but smile back. It chased away the cold.

“We’re at that stage,” he said to himself. “That’s good. That’s…”

“Stage? Am I some butterfly coming out?” Charlie sunk deeper into the chair, throwing her legs over the side. “Coming out, by the way, did you know I’m a lesbian?”

He blinked. No, then. “I — I didn’t think it was polite to pry. Thank you for… telling me?” He looked so confused Charlie had to laugh. He bowed his head, contrite. “Regardless, you aren’t the first fledgling that I have come across. Most tend to go through stages. Loathing, acceptance, getting to know me and then hating me more, and then settling into life as a kindred and understanding how things stand.”

“Uh-huh. Where does calling you Dad fit in?”

His smile bittered. “Getting to know me.”

“You getting ready for some adolescent I-hate-Daddy shit?” said Charlie with a smirk.

“Yes. You can always leave and you can always come back.”

His seriousness stole her humour. He began to scribble something on a paper, the pen scratching like mice on the inside of her brain.

“Rhys had a D&D game tonight,” she blurted to chase away the quiet. “First session. Copper, Midnight, Orion, and Jesse.”

Monroe glanced up. “Be careful with him,” he advised. “You killed his mentor and leader of his coterie.”

Against her will, she felt herself sober further. “It’s why I got in contact with him,” she said quietly. “I’ve been feeling bad for it. I know, what a shocker. Murder is bad. But, he seems like he’s doing okay. How’s Hawthorne?” asked Charlie, more nicely than she had the last time. Everyone was talking about it.  _ Another  _ Ventrue in the city and, apparently, Ventrue kept their childer locked in the attic the first twenty years. Charlie hadn’t seen Hawthorne, so maybe it was even right.

Monroe grimaced. “Quiet. She knows me so well, no one can hate me better. I come here to escape the house. When I’ve had enough worrying about the city, I return home.”

“Should learn to have fun,” she advised.

“I used to,” he said wistfully. “But, since my mask has to die, like yours, I can’t be involved anymore in Blue Moon. Not the studio, events, interviews. Nothing. A vampire once again. My issues are my rivals—”

“Like Garcia was?” asked Charlie sharply.

“I did not start that,” said Monroe. “But, yes. His girls, now have made it clear that they want my head, though there’s no real price on it. I suspect they know I could outbid them.”

Charlie didn’t like the idea of getting rid of Garcia, only to pave the way for his girls to pick up where he left off. They needed to end it before it started.

“What if we called a truce with them?” she asked.

Monroe looked at her very differently, pleased but surprised. “Maybe. It would be a risk. What would you offer them? We don’t exactly have an army that could stand toe-to-toe with the Sabbat.”

“Uh. I’ll get back to you.” Monroe’s smile deepened, but then Charlie had it. She clapped. “Alright, what about this? The Valley Prince is pushed right up against us, right? Right up on Glendale. What if we tell the Garcias and El Hermandad to abandon East LA, come west, and then the Valley Prince will have to deal with the Sabbat?”

“That means  _ we _ will have to deal with them,” he said. “I like your thinking, though.” 

Monroe stood and indicated for her to follow him into a tight meeting room with a glass table and half dozen chairs. It was where he had taken the Valley Prince’s herald. From out of the locked closet, he pulled a rolling whiteboard. On one side had a dizzying web. The other was a map of the city. 

He pointed. “Sabbat thrive in areas of economic disenfranchisement,” he explained. “If we pull back the Garcias from East LA, they will flood into Pasadena and ultimately drag it down. Embracing more homeless and dregs, bringing crime, risking the Masquerade.”

Over Pasadena was a small symbol, a crossed sword-and-scepter, along with a name. David Gerred.

“And we don’t wanna piss off David?” she figured.

“David Gerred is an independent Ventrue, like me, and has been here for decades,” he said. “His backing won’t make or break this war, but it is a bad idea to make enemies we don’t need to.”

“War?” she repeated. The word roughened on her tongue, reverbing through the Cobweb. He was right. The strands were tense, their ends hidden. She couldn’t follow them, the connections to other Malkavians, the whirr of future and past events. The wiggles on the whiteboard turned to blue and black and red inchworms, wriggling out of place, into a dense nest.

Monroe turned back to her. “This is what I do,” he said heavily. “I plan this war and I try to keep Silver Lake out of anyone’s crosshair. And that’s all I  _ can  _ do.” 

Charlie frowned. He sounded so desperate. “I can help.”

He circled the girls’ names. “Deal with the Garcias, then. I don’t care if you kill them and get their target off my back. I don’t care if you make us new allies.”

Charlie swelled at the opportunity. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so casual about killing three people. I mean, they are people. You’re people. I’m people.”

Monroe sighed. “I have a lot more on my plate than a couple of jumped up Anarch Brujah neonates,” he said disdainfully. “I think attempting to broker peace is a bad idea—”

“Why?” she asked.

His eye twitched at being interrupted, but he answered, “The bad blood between me and the Garcias will not wash clean. In the face of a greater foe, perhaps. In peacetime, it will rear its head and I will have to deal with them permanently.”

“Permanently,” she snorted. “You sound like a mobster.”

Monroe chuckled to himself, abashed. “Maybe you’re right, though. The Valley Prince has agreed to our independence, but allying with the Anarchs will throw suspicion off me.”

Charlie sucked at her lips. He had told her before about his friendship with the would-be Prince of the San Francisco Bay and, now, LA. “So, you’re worried that because you and Barty are on speaking terms, that the rest of LA will want your guts?”

Monroe lost his humour and became that chilled, emotionless creature that didn’t exactly fill her with hope. “Of course, Charlie,” he said. “I’m just trying to make sure we don’t anger the wrong people.” Then, before it could scare her, it was gone. He shut his eyes briefly, strained with worry. “I am sorry, Charlie, but I want to ask something of you.”

“Anything.”

Charlie gasped as Monroe turned invisible. It was gone a second later, like a bad TV signal flickering.

“A Nosferatu, many years ago, owed me and I learned a little from them, but I can’t move under Obfuscate. I’ll need a boost.” He raised a hand as she shrugged and handed over her arm. “You don’t need to,” he assured her. “I can ask Rubio, or find another.”

Charlie snorted. “Whatever. I don’t care. Jack and I shared.” She took her arm back and squinted at him. “Wait. Does this mean you owe  _ me _ then?”

“It can,” he allowed. “Major boon for blood spilled. You can tell me to kill someone, risk my life or reputation. The Hollowmen was a major boon.”

Charlie chewed on her lip, then shook her head. “No,” she said firmly. “We’re… We’re friends, right?”

Somewhere, in her room, it was in the  _ Vampire Dictionary _ , under the heading of Kindred Natures.  _ Vampires don’t have friends _ . But that was wrong, even if Monroe wrote it. He wrote it because he had to believe it. It made his job easier. His string vibrated through the Cobweb and the wriggling inchworms on the whiteboard rearranged themselves into two thick words.  _ Forgive him _ . The prophecy Rosa had left Charlie with.

“I made a promise to you,” he said at last, “that you will be safe under my protection and prosper so long as you’re with me.”

“That’s not a ‘yes’.”

Monroe opened and shut his mouth. “Yes,” he admitted finally. “Yes, Charlie, we’re friends.”

She extended her arm again, then retracted it as he reached. “Is this sexual?” she asked suddenly. “Is this a sexy thing? Because that’s not gonna fly then.”

Monroe smiled thinly and patted the arm. “Bite it yourself.”

Charlie did, wincing at the sharp pain of her fangs sinking into her own skin. Monroe took her by the wrist, gentle but firm, and pressed his lips to the red glimmer. Maybe it wasn’t sexual, but it was Wrong. It was intimate in a way she wasn’t prepared for. Wet slurping sounds echoed strangely.

Monroe released the arm without injury. Charlie sealed the wound with practice. If only she could bury the memory as fast.

“Good job,” he said. “Thank you.”

Monroe tested the Obfuscate. It came clearer, now, though Charlie could still see him. He licked the last of the blood off his lips and looked at her odd. His eyes were soft, vulnerable, and lost. Words balanced on the tip of his tongue. 

Charlie frowned. “Something up?”

Monroe shook his head. “No. Just… Thank you. I told you before. I’ve been subject to the full, three-part bond twice. It… Thank you for not making me seek another out.”

Charlie smiled gently. “Of course. I didn’t even really notice anything between me and Jack when we swapped.”

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. He took her hand in his and held it tight. “This — Garcia, the Camarilla — has been unfair on you and I’ve been powerless to help you. You deserved a quiet first decade, to adjust to undeath, your Disciplines, your curse.”

“At least we live in exciting times,” she said with a shaky smile. She squeezed his hand. “Is that the bond talking?”

“Maybe,” he allowed, “but it’s the truth.”

Charlie retired quickly. She wanted to hug him. With the bond and her blood in him, he’d probably not even go all stiff and awkward. But even that didn’t sit right. Maybe she hadn’t thought that through well enough. Oh, well. Monroe knew better than she did and explicitly asked for the bond, a worthwhile price to pay for Obfuscate for him.

When she woke up the following night, Monroe wasn’t around upstairs. He’d probably gone home to face Hawthorne. Charlie’s heart bled for him, but only a little. She had her own plans.

Trying hard to not act too lame (or too cool), Charlie pulled on a pair of tacky palm tree boardshorts. Vampires didn’t get hypothermia — or hung over, thankfully. Lately, she had thrown a t-shirt over the bikini top but she had some second guesses about that. Most of her t-shirts were baggy and dark muted colours. Made her look like a slob. She didn’t even know  _ why _ she was so anxious, anyways. It was just surfing.

Charlie grabbed a backpack and the board Zari had bought for her before she had left. The memories at the Grove clung to it like maggots. Quickly, they took over her thoughts with brainrot. Didn’t matter how fast she drove, they followed her.

They couldn’t go to Santa Monica. Charlie liked Zuma Beach, by Malibu, but she could only get there by crossing Westside. Venice Beach was cool for a daytrip, to hang around the pier and boardwalk but — also, Westside.

Charlie wondered if the Westside Camarilla surfed so much.

Instead, she decided to risk it with Manhattan Beach. Just south of LAX, Charlie kept the Raufoss pistol resting on her lap the whole way, but there was no trouble to be had. A couple of seashell white houses overlooked the surf, but they were mostly dark. A handful of people drank wine on their balconies and enjoyed the crisp night air. For the most part, it was peaceful and quiet. Humans got to do their surfing and water frolicing in the sunlight. Beach shacks had closed and only a few teenagers drank on the pier down the way.

Charlie spotted her first. She stabbed the surfboard in the sand and dropped herself beside Jesse. Jesse, too, wore swimming trunks and a shirt, both black. Her white-blonde hair was already dripping wet. Her eyes focused on the water, like in a trance.

“Earth to Jesse,” said Charlie, waving a hand. “Hey, how you doing?”

Jesse blinked, startled, and the shadows darkened in the night. Charlie rolled her eyes at the theatrics and summoned the red-eye night vision from Protean. The world brightened.

“Fine,” said Jesse gruffly. “Just, I was born on the other coast. Didn’t think I’d get to see this one, too.”

“I heard Lasombra like the water,” said Charlie helpfully. She pulled off her sneakers and threw them at her backpack. “Something about the Abyss speaking to the Beast.”

Jesse cringed and pulled her knees to her chest. Her dark eyes grew mournful and she dug her toes into the sand. Charlie was starkly reminded that Jesse had been turned as a teenager, maybe even still in high school. Despite her height and bulk, Jesse couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen when she had left home as a vampire slayer, turned by one of her early hunts into some shadow demon vampire thing. 

“Sorry,” she said quietly. Charlie lay a hand on Jesse’s back and she leaned into the touch. 

“Sorry,” said Jesse back. She cracked her knuckles habitually, nervously. “My…” She grimaced but plowed on. “My little brother was a big fan of the ocean. Only swimming, though. We didn’t have money for boards. Skinnydipping is free.”

Charlie didn’t know much about her brother, though Jesse had brought him up more and more. A twelve-year-old who liked anime and Japanese comics and bad puns and had dreams about being an artist. Charlie never asked for more than she was given and cherished every piece.

“Bella hated the ocean,” said Charlie. Somehow, every time she said her name, it hurt less. “If you could get her in the water, she loved it, but the idea of a pool without an edge scared her. And she hated sand, especially when you come out of the water and it sticks. Those five minutes before the sun dried it, I swear, you’d think she was dying.”

Jesse sniffed a smile. The edges of her trembled, like a bomb about to go off. “His name was Clarence,” she said.

“Clarence,” she repeated. “Clarence Harper.”

“We were at the beach, late at night like this,” said Jesse in a hollow voice. “We only lived a few blocks away from a bad part of the beach — full of broken bottles and trash and stony sand. But Clarence loved it. He could only go if I was there to look after him. I was reading.” Her voice shook worse than her shoulders.

Charlie’s heart ached. “You don’t have to,” she whispered, but Jesse kept going.

“Clarence yelled he was coming out. Heard him splash through the shallows. I was reading with a flashlight, night-blind, when something attacked him. They fell in the water, struggling, and I shone the light. I saw…” She shook her head. “The water was red and… I ran to the house, but there was no blood, no nothing when my parents and I came back. They said he drowned. A little boy? Swimming? Late at night? And the big sister watching him blamed it on a vampire?”

The ocean waves crashed on the shores, rhythmic and sensual, indifferent to the tears they had wrought from the impenetrable hunter. Charlie wasn’t any good at comfort. Never had been. She said the only thing she could think of, which was what Monroe had always said to her.

“I know.”

Bit by bit, Jesse calmed down, smearing the bloody tears along her arms.

“We can go home,” said Charlie weakly. “Go to a movie, or hiking, or watch the next season of  _ Fullmetal Alchemist _ .”

“Let’s just have fun,” said Jesse, dejected. “We can do that, right? Last night was fun.”

Charlie hurried to get them started on that fun business. She explained how to pop up on the board, how waxing it kept it tacky for better grip. Then that was a whole other thing because, where did Jesse get that board from? Oh, that rental shack that’s been closed since three PM.

“ _ Jesse _ ,” she groaned.

“I left money,” said Jesse indignantly. “And I’m bringing it back. So it’s not stealing. It’s renting.”

The night was clear and waters as good as could be expected. Foamy waves crested and even bigger ones occasionally. The bad weather lately had only made for better conditions. She used to hate night surfing. Dustin had got a hard hat with a headlight on it that made him look like a tool. Now, though, it was all she got. Better make do.

“Are you a strong swimmer?” asked Charlie as they waded into the ocean.

“I can not drown, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Jesse with a shrug.

She rolled her eyes. “Neither of us can drown. I just don’t wanna go chasing your dumb ass all over the ocean — or,” she added as the black waters deepened in shadow, “have the beachfront homeowners start screaming about krackens and loch ness monsters.”

Jesse grumbled, but she was as happy as Charlie had seen her. Her eyes sparkled, the Abyssal blackness chased out, and she fought a smile to scowl. Dimples twitched. Her aura glimmered, almost sparkled, in a beautiful tawny rainbow.

“What you looking at?” she demanded.

“You.” Charlie blushed, hardly able to believe she had even said that.

Jesse didn’t blush. She stopped fighting the scowl and let herself smile. There was something in it that made Charlie’s heart stop, again. “Oh, yeah? You got a sweet—”

A huge wave crashed over the both of them, spraying salt and hair into their eyes. Jesse cursed, spluttering, as she scrubbed her eyes.

“Oh, fuck, my board,” she cried. A black tentacle rose from the depths to catch the board as the ocean battered it away.

“That would’ve been a sick wave to catch,” said Charlie, struggling to find a breath that wasn’t filled with salt and hair. She reknotted her ponytail into a crooked bun, but the frizzy curls strained. “And what’d I say about creatures of the deep?”

Jesse took the rented board back from the shadow. “Uh, do it?” she offered meekly.

To be fair, that was a huge advantage for Jesse, especially as a new surfer. The tentacles aided her balance, gave her strength to stay upright, and, when the nose of the board dipped under, the shadows rose it above the water line.

They still wiped plenty. Even if vampires didn’t get hypothermia, didn’t mean getting smacked by cold water wasn’t a wake-up call. Muscles didn’t tire, lungs didn’t burn for air, and Charlie fell into the pure sensory experience. The water, the wind, the spray, the wobbling balance, and adrenaline of a wave. 

Jesse laughed in disbelief when she managed to ride her first one to shore. She stumbled off the board, cheering into the empty beach. Charlie swam back, dragging her own board by an ankle leash.

“Congrats,” shouted Charlie. She staggered out of the shallows, dragging her legs through the thick water and sand.

The sound made Jesse tense and spin, eyes black with shadows and fear. Charlie cursed as she realised what had happened. She reached out and, again, Jesse let herself crack — if not break — in her arms. Gone was the spitting rage, the shoulders-first swagger, and she was just another broken teenage girl who had never been allowed to grieve.

“We had fun, though, didn’t we?” asked Charlie thickly.

Jesse snorted wetly and pulled her head up. “The best. I never…” She shook her head.

Charlie could feel the end of the sentence, vibrating in silent sentiment across the aura, the Cobweb. The stars watched, thousands of eyes twinkling. The waves whispered as they broke among their ankles. 

_ I never had so much fun as a vampire. _

_ I never thought I could come back to the water. _

_ I never had anyone care about me like that. _

Charlie didn’t know who moved first, but suddenly Jesse’s lips were on hers. Her hands, strong, dripping, cold, pulled her closer. The darkness came alive, a hundred hands of smoke and shadow to hold with infinite tenderness.

The stars blinked. The waves sang. The darkness kissed.

Charlie kissed back.


	18. The Sword

Monroe couldn’t say his next meetings with Petra van Allen went any better than the previous, when she turned up unannounced to declare Barty’s praxis. The woman was untrusting and prickly, but without the manners of most high clans. As many Ventrue had a fondness for blue, Tremere did for red and she was no exception. She graced the Gray-Pacific elysium in a tasteful sleeveless red gown, accompanied by pearls and, occasionally, a smile. Monroe’s own face ached from the posturing.

“All I am saying is that I sympathise,” he said, “the distance from your own tight-knit clan you must’ve felt all these years in San Francisco.”

Her pale pinched face soured further. “I am distant from nothing and no one I have ever found worthy of my investment, either time or expertise. I became their loss.”

Monroe sipped politely from the flute of blood. He had never done well in Camarilla salons. Harpies smelled outcasts like vampires smell blood. Petra, as Barty’s own wife? — lover? — mate, seemed the safest course but she seemed determined to prove him wrong.

“You would be a great loss to any,” he said graciously. “Forgive me, Madame Herald, but—”

He had slowed his speech to create an exit, but Petra smiled thinly.

“Yes, it would be best that I, too, become your loss. Good night, Mr Monroe.”

Not loss so much as freedom, Monroe took it and dipped from the ballroom. Whispers followed him, dignified but uncouth. It could never be said Camarilla did not know how to throw a party — in the seventeenth century. Many kindred wore old garb, hoopskirts, and tights on men and women alike. Elders felt comfortable in the relics, while ancillae curried favour by the dress. The aesthetic only highlighted the levels. Barty’s court was young, though many pretended otherwise and adopted Elizabethan costume. Opportunistic ancillae poured in from across the nation, desperate to become pawns if it meant a choice piece of the pie of Los Angeles. Barty granted court titles like a Mad Hatter. Primogen, clan whips, even that new sheriff. Barty wasn’t desperate, no, he just enjoyed sharing his own joy. One night, it would blow up in his face. 

Monroe wandered the halls until he found the rooftop deck. The chill air tasted of rain. He leaned against the rails and shut his eyes. Alone, for the moment, Monroe allowed himself to wallow. He felt like he was jumping from one frying pan into another, desperate to avoid the flames. Isaac Abrams and Ashley Swan, as expected, were at each other’s throats in a harmless feud. Whoever died would leave him with a better, more loyal lieutenant. The Sabbat hid out in Downtown. Nines was unresponsive. The Garcias a threat waiting to undermine him. Charlie’s blood coursed through his veins, itching guilt with every step in the hallowed halls of elysium. And Hawthorne, his most personal of problems. 

And Barty. Monroe still did not know what to make of the prince. History taught him people were never what they seemed. Yet, he wanted to believe.

“Elysium are supposed to be occasions of fun and frivolity.”

He snapped and turned. He had only caught fleeting glimpses of the woman, but even that took his breath away. She was achingly beautiful, neither waifish nor curvacious, but the very figure artisans had attempted to immortalize for eons. Her skin was pearlescent marble, her eyes cut emeralds. Hair the colour of rose gold hung in a sleek curtain down the back of a white dress. On any other, it would be simple and plain, but made her look like the very manifestation of an ancient Greek goddess.

Victoria Ash, the seneschal Pieterzoon had forced onto Barty, advanced with an intimate bashful smile. “Ventrue are not ones for fun, are they?”

Monroe found his voice. “I do have fun, sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” she echoed sternly. She pouted, mocking him. “When work so allows. To me, this looks a lot like thinking.”

A smile stretched his lips. “I’m having fun now.”

Victoria laughed and he felt compelled to laugh with her. It wasn’t until she touched his hand that Monroe recognised the Presence. She wore it like a halo. He stiffened and attempted to think his way out of the influence. 

“That’s good,” she said, but her voice hardened a touch. “Mr Monroe, the elysia of the Camarilla are a safe space for all kindred, but it has been four nights you have joined us. As seneschal, I inquire as to your interest here.”

“Has the prince not told you?” he asked coolly. He withdrew his hand. “We were once keen friends and have sought to renew that friendship in a new age. I find myself responsible for a number of Los Angeles kindred and it is in their benefit that I ingratiate myself.”

“Prince Vaughn has told me much and more,” said Victoria. Her face did not change, but the intimate smile became predatory. “And, yet, I am old enough to know crowns are scarce ever worn by one head.”

“I have no interest in the crown of Los Angeles,” said Monroe bluntly. “The extent of the influence I wish to have is to ensure my kindred are treated well during praxis. That is it.”

Victoria Ash did not believe him at all. The perfect perky nose rose ever so much higher. Monroe wondered if she knew she was Pieterzoon’s pawn as much as he was, as much as Barty, and who knew how many others. 

“Ventrue are so accustomed to power that the desire itches at their very Beasts,” she said. “The status quo all but necessitates a prince of the sword-and-scepter.”

Monroe raised his almost empty glass. “Barty is unlike most Ventrue.”

In his unsaid words, they came to an agreement. Barty was unlike the Ventrue tyrants who so often ruled. He could be influenced rather than strongarmed. To that end, Victoria Ash had greater power as his seneschal than any could expect.

Victoria  _ tinked _ her glass against his and drank. “So long as we understand each other.”

“Madame Seneschal, I am at the service of the crown.”

Monroe bowed and he felt her smile broaden at the submission. Ventrue were not the only ones to thirst for power.

“It must be hard,” he said compassionately as he straightened, “being so beautiful it is all anyone sees.”

For a brief moment, Victoria’s mirage faltered. Below, he glimpsed the coldness in those emeralds. Then, the effervescent smile returned and it was a bad memory.

“I once fostered a Ventrue,” he continued. “Her name was Sandra Redding, or Red. She had been the secret ghouled lover of the Ventrue whip in Dallas. For services rendered, he was granted the Embrace and gave it to her, impromptu. I’m sure you understand how an unexpected Embrace was accepted by the clan.”

Victoria chuckled darkly. “I am sure.”

“Red had a beautiful face, shining orange hair, and a notable sire who disregarded her. And she was a woman. The clan shuttered her. The court shunned her. Women, of course, are ornaments and prizes of powerful men.”

“By that metric, then,” said Victoria with a radiant laugh, “Prince Vaughn must not be particularly powerful if he keeps that warlock herald.”

Monroe did not smile. “I understand the value of being underestimated—”

“You know nothing.” Three words, dropped with such cold hatred that he couldn’t conceal his surprise. Then, it was gone.

“Perhaps, I don’t know,” he said. He felt the shovel in his hands but he couldn’t stop himself from digging. The impulse was artificial, drove into his heart with a stake of Presence, but he couldn’t find it in him to shut up. “I do not know what it is like to be a woman, but I do know about being passed over, about being treated like a pariah and barred from opportunity.”

Victoria set the glass down. Her eyes were on the flower pots on the patio. Her profile remained impassive, but distant, and Monroe remembered her great age. Elder even than Pieterzoon, who had so much, and she, who had so little as to indebt herself to him for a sliver of what her age should’ve owed her.

“Those were your choices,” she said frostily. “I never chose to be what I am and have certain doors shut and others open. Those open to me, always, were looked down upon.”

“Climb,” said Monroe. “Never settle for what is handed to you.”

Victoria turned back to him with that superior smile. “I do intend to. I am a rose, but I am not an ornament.”

“None would mistake you for such.”

“Only fools do. Tell me, Mr Monroe, to whom do your loyalties lie?”

Monroe blinked, thrown off guard by the strike of the blatant question. “To my people.”

“Ah.” Her smile curled into a smirk. “To the highest bidder, then,” she whispered. “I will keep that in mind, little blue blood.”

The Presence glowed. The implication was clear. She thought him a fool. Monroe had no intention to dissuade the idea. He swallowed, eyes fluttering uncertainly, and he smiled, stepping closer. 

“Please, Madame Senechal—”

“Victoria.” Her smile grew.

“Victoria.” He let himself savour the name, a moment to lose himself in her eyes. “Victoria, I—”

“You always did like Toreadors, didn’t you, Matthew?”

Victoria snarled at the voice with an impulse of pure loathing.

Monroe pretended to come up from the sweeping waves of the Presence. When Victoria turned from him, Monroe glowered at Barty. The prince lingered in the doorway, hands in the pockets of his tuxedo slacks. The overlarge lion sat next to him.

“Can I borrow the autarkis, Vickie?” asked Barty with a fanged smile.

Her nostrils flared, but the lion must’ve smelled the anger. It growled and snarled. “Of course, Your Highness,” she said indifferently. “Excuse me, I must powder my nose.”

Victoria Ash brushed by the prince and stalked off.

Barty smiled mischievously at Monroe. “You’re welcome.”

Monroe passed a hand over his face. Barty couldn’t be near this stupid. Couldn’t be. “I had it under control,” he said tensely.

Barty laughed, loud and long and ringing. They returned to the empty long halls of Gray-Pacific. Endless polished oak doors and smoky marble floors. The lion Mithras padded alongside, Barty’s hand in the mane tenderly.

“Why are you so damn fond of roses?” asked Barty, still chuckling. “Sure, they smell nice and know what to do with fangs and in the sheets, but there’s not a brain cell to share between the clan.”

Monroe thought again of the burning hatred of Victoria’s eyes, of Ashley’s merciless cunning, and the delicate dance it took to stay out of its reach. Better kept close. “They are our traditional counterpart,” he said instead. “The soul of our kind, as we are its mind. Don’t expect a fish to walk and bludgeon it for its failures.”

Barty snorted. “Whatever. I still say, a single Tremere, especially dragged from their damned chantries and pyramids, are worth a hundred Toreador.”

A shiver chased his spine. Barty had a point. In raw power and politics, Tremere could be unmatched. Their loyalty could reach far by way of magic or the chantry. Where there was one, there could be a dozen more. For the first time, Monroe considered Barty’s century-old reputation for fucking warlocks and wondered if there was more to it than mere lust for danger and fire.

“Be careful with Victoria Ash,” said Monroe. “She seemed dissatisfied with her station.”

Barty threw him a disdainful look. “If the girl wants a crown, I’ll give her a tiara. She’ll spend all night in the mirror preening she won’t have any time to do any prince-ing.”

Monroe smiled. “And what sort of ‘prince-ing’ are you doing here, Your Highness?”

He grumbled. “The kind that keeps me sane. Come on, Matthew. And didn’t I tell you to quit it with the titles?”

“Every time I see you, Your Highness.”

Monroe followed Barty down the stairs. For a moment, he almost feared Barty was about to lead him to one of the private dens like he had last time. It had taken three nights for the nausea and coke-fueled blood to pass. Instead, Barty took him outside. A blue-jacketed valet slid up with what was evidently Barty’s car, a cherry muscle car. Monroe expected nothing less.

Barty fished a pack of cigarettes and struck a light. Both kindred flinched — Monroe was surprised by the natural reaction. Monroe slid a sideways glare, but he only shrugged.

“If you can stand it, it’s one of the few things we can still taste,” said Barty. He offered the pack but Monroe pushed it away.

Mithras sniffed the valet, who scrambled behind his podium, trembling in every inch.

Barty tucked a spare cigarette behind his ear, then pushed the pack into Monroe’s breast pocket. It crumbled a little and he accepted it with a sigh.

Denying a prince’s whims could be very stupid.

It was why Monroe tolerated the outrageous appearance of a man he recognised. The man had been a brother to him. The prince was a stranger. And so, when Barty whistled for him, Monroe slid into the passenger’s seat and hoped he would return home in one piece.

Barty obeyed only the barest of traffic laws. His cracked window roared with wind.

“I bet you thought I forgot,” said Barty with a wry smile. “What kind of friend would I be if I forgot?”

Monroe raised an eyebrow. “The memories of princes are not that of common men, Your Highness.”

Barty laughed and spared him a glance. Those eyes he knew, as wild and free as clouds heavy with lightning. “Happy Embrace night, Matthew.”

“Are we celebrating it with a kidnapping?”

“Let me worry about where we’re headed — oh shit.” Barty swiveled in the abandoned road. Rubber burned. “Missed the turn.”

Somehow, they made it to their destination without incident. Barty ground the butt under his heel as they stepped out. Nostrils full of nicotine, Monroe couldn’t smell it at first. In the distance, he heard waves. Shapes pressed against the gloom of the darkness. A large, long building. Open fields by the ocean. Fences.

“Horses?” Monroe blurted.

Barty fished for the second cigarette and his smile softened. 

This late, the stables were shuttered closed. For the best. Monroe wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to explain two tuxedoed men turned up in a sixties Pontiac, with a massive unleashed lion. Drugs, probably. Practically and dignity fled him as the gravel road fast disappeared under him.

The varied smells of horses and hay took Monroe back to a different times. Memories half forgotten dragged to the forefront of his mind. A sun-bleached fort on the prairies. Dreary off-days spent with drinking in the bunks, playing cards. The horses had been next door. He hadn’t even known he had told Barty at all.

Barty exchanged words with a dumpy woman who didn’t think them or their lion surprising. She led out a horse as Barty’s face threatened to split in two with his grin.

“What d’you think of her?” he asked.

The mare seemed to be covered in white velvet, spotless as new snow. An intelligence in her eyes found Monroe’s and her nostrils flared as she took in his scent. He reached a hand and couldn’t help but laugh when she nuzzled. Moist hot breath tickled. Barty had ghouled her to Ventrue blood.

“What’s her name?” asked Monroe. He stepped closer and raised his hand to her muzzle.

“Artemis.”

Monroe cast an eye to Mithras. “You have something for ghouling strange animals and naming them after methuselahs, don’t you?”

Barty grinned. “Fine, if you don’t like your present I’ll take her back.” He clicked his fingers at the handler, who fled off into the dark, across the field to the house. “Figured she should make up for all the ones I’ve missed, cousin.”

Artemis. He stroked her and she whinnied against him. First childe of Ventru. Warrior Goddess of Sparta. The Adorned. The Fierce. She had codified the tradition of fostering lost fledglings. Monroe had always feared he had more of her in his veins than he wanted. The ancients had been cruel even by their own standards.

Monroe took a flask from under his jacket and handed it to Barty. “For all the ones I missed,” he said fondly.

Barty uncorked it and gave it a sniff, then another. And a third. “Fuck is this?” he asked, already knowing. “No, what the  _ fuck _ is this?”

“Whiskey. Damn strong, too. I have a Setite who’s been brewing and selling beer for decades. Lately, he’s figured out spirits, too. Wine.”

Barty snorted. “Caine forbid the Camarilla figure out they can drink wine.” He took a cautious sip, barely coating his lips, and started to laugh.

Monroe smiled. “Something you can taste other than cigarettes and blood? There’s—”

Barty hugged him. He had always been physical. A hugger, a fighter, a friend who expressed his friendships with claps on the back, a punch on the shoulder, a stroke on the brow. Monroe hadn’t expected it. He froze. More memories threatened him. Old ones he thought he had buried forever when he left San Francisco. This was not his cousin, though. It was a prince.

Before he could figure out how to react, it was over.

Barty took a hearty swig and howled into the empty night. “Jesus Christ! Can we get drunk on this?”

“Yes,” he said faintly. “Sure. And, there’s more where that came from. It’s a prototype from—”

“Cousin.” Barty slung a serious arm over his shoulder. “If you can get me a barrel of this every, oh, month or so, I’ll kick the rose-faced bitch to the curb and make you my seneschal? How’s that, Matthew?”

Monroe stared, horrified. “Barty, you  _ can’t— _ ”

“I’m the prince. Who’s gonna say no? Now, you enjoy your present, before you have to get back to that hellhole you call home.”

He couldn’t have been serious.  _ Couldn’t _ have been.

Monroe’s mind raced in circles. He couldn’t bring it up as a serious discussion to Barty, not when he was in this mood. It was only a joke. But, what if it hadn’t been? What purpose, politically, would there be to incur Pieterzoon’s wrath by disposing of his seneschal and offering a replacement out of nepotism?

Artemis stole his thoughts quickly, though. Monroe felt a very different breed of fool as the flask quickly emptied between the two of them. Barty found his own mount, saddled and bridled in the stables. “Queen Anne,” he declared, as Mithras’s childe and ruler of London in his stead. “Dear Great-Great Aunt Annie.” 

Monroe had never ridden or been near animals in the last century or so. He didn’t expect much. What he got instead was the wind. Ghouls took on the traits of their master’s clan’s blood. Ventrue, so attuned to mental and emotional changes, had a long history of ghouling horses. Now, Mornoe knew why. Artemis moved before he could even figure out how to tell her. 

A few casual laps of the corral proved too meek for Barty, though. He pulled them both out down the gravel road and onto the street, where they picked up speed. The ocean roared over the clip-clop of the hooves. Brisk wind feathered through his hair and billowed his shirt. The whiskey heated his cold blood.

Monroe didn’t know how much time passed before they found themselves back at the stables, but it wasn’t enough. The timid dumpy stablehand came back to take care of the horses. Barty clicked the key fob and the headlights blinked at him.

Barty rummaged through Monroe’s pockets. “And, look at that, I’ll even get you back home by ten.”

“Looking for something?” he asked, bemused.

“Trying to bum my own cigarettes off you.” He found them and took another pair before tucking the packet back. “I’m a happily married man, cousin. Don’t forget it.”

Monroe smirked. “Pick that up from your beloved seneschal, too?”

If Barty was a menace sober, he was worse drunk. Frankly, Monroe considered himself lucky to be a kindred in possession of Fortitude. Barty hit him in the arm.

“Vampires marrying,” he snorted. “What a fucking genius thought of that. As if the Camarilla didn’t have  _ enough _ of the whole royal sixteenth century court, we need to add in political marriages, too, now.”

Barty killed the engine in a parking lot in Silver Lake. Monroe couldn’t invite him inside for a drink. Surely, he knew that. This far into enemy territory, it would be dangerous to even linger.

Then, Barty found his voice. “I missed you, man.” He leaned against the window and took a long drag from the cigarette. “There’s been some fucking nuts ups and downs since you been gone but, LA, man. Once you put out the cheese, you invite mice, I guess.”

“The ancillae?” he asked. “For most of us, you know it’s the best chance anyone’s likely to get in the Camarilla.”

“I know, I know. I just.” He sighed. The breath rattled. “I wish I could leave. Take Petra and the boys and just, go. Pieterzoon can fuck himself.”

“What’s stopping you?”

Barty’s face curled in despair. “The thought of what I’d leave behind. I’m sure all of LA hates me — for the purges those archons are doing. It’s not my fault, or maybe it is. I feel like I’m trying to stop a giant boulder from rolling down the hill. Worried what’ll happen if I leave them to it.” He gnawed his lip. “Scared, more like.” He threw the butt out the window. “I meant what I said, cousin. I need you with me. Not land-locked with the Anarchs where you’re doing no good to anyone.”

“Barty.” Monroe couldn’t summon the will to address the crumpled man as a prince. Honour he owed to his people ground him to a halt. Honour and fear.

Barty waved a hand. “That’s okay. I promise. I need this, too. You and me, an hour or two, here and there, of fucking sanity. Whatever you can give me, I’ll take it. But.” He smiled tensely. “I could always use more.”

“I have responsibilities now,” said Monroe. “We both do, to things a lot greater than each other. Leaving our past aside—”

“Don’t you go leaving our past aside, Matthew,” said Barty hollowly. “It’s all we got.”

“I’ll do what I can for you,” said Monroe, knowing he would likely never keep it as a promise.

As Barty lapsed into silence, more ghost than vampire, Monroe left before he could do anything stupid. Like suggest disposing of any of the elders in Barty’s court. God, Barty. What had the world done to him? It had either broken him or left him with such coldness as to impersonate himself perfectly.

The night was young. So long as the moon still shone, there was work to be done. Monroe returned to Blue Moon. As he turned the corner out of the parking lot, he slipped invisible. His mask was dead. And he had the combined powers of invisibility and the ability to erase memories. Monroe did not exist. It sobered him.

He entered Blue Moon through the back door. The lack of recognition bit hard, harder than he expected. Ventrue were not blooded for invisibility. It was not even Monroe’s, not anymore. Ritter had killed the owner and purchased it under Pieterzoon’s empire. Another Dutch ghoul ran it during daylight hours. Giving Blue Moon back to him had not been necessary. Yet Pieterzoon did. 

Ritter sat on the couch in his office, prim and proper, eyes and fingers laser focused on the laptop. It had taken Monroe three decades to deprogram Hawthorne’s iron formality. It could take even longer for Ritter, despite his comparative youth. Hawthorne herself sat behind the desk, eyes shut and their half-finished game between them. She had taken to playing in her head or reciting the oratory to herself when alone.

Noisily, Monroe dragged another chair behind his desk. “Good evening.”

She didn’t respond.

He grimaced and continued. “Pawn to F6.”

“Rook to E4,” said Hawthorne. “Check.”

Monroe moved her piece across the board and took it with a bishop. “Light bishop to E4,” he said.

Hawthorne smirked. “Queen to E4. Checkmate.”

Monroe changed their pieces again and considered the board. It wasn’t checkmate. He could still save his king. Hawthorne had always been excellent at chess, an occupational hazard of being a Ventrue ghoul for two centuries. Even with her memory, playing without a board went better than he had expected.

Monroe tipped over his king. “Checkmate.”

“It’s not,” she argued. “You’re letting me win.”

“It was checkmate,” he said plainly. He took the pieces away and set the board up again.

“It wasn’t. Put them back. Your king to C3.”

She realised she had given him an order and the stillness held something else. Not regret at the outburst, but a challenge to his authority. This was not the Hawthorne he knew. It was one stricken by the Beast — by his own doing. Monroe, in truth, didn’t mind it but a Ventrue sire would.

“You’re testing me,” he accused. With those three words, the challenge backed down. “Why?”

She took a deep breath and flinched at the alien feeling. “Is this another lesson?”

“It will be. Why did you test me? If you want to play social games with me, you will understand the moves you are making.”

A muscle in her jaw worked over her words. “I know you pity me,” she said shortly. “I needed confirmation. So, I lied and you confirmed it.”

The abruptness in her words ached, but Monroe composed himself. “Why did you do it?”

“Because I hate you,” she said softly.

“For petty feelings,” he corrected. He glanced to Ritter who, ever dutiful, pretended not to hear the conversation. Monroe wished for the privilege. “A certain candor has to exist between Ventrue—”

“Why?” she demanded.

“Because the drive of our Beast is for power over others,” he said patiently. “The clan is dedicated to using that drive for better things than abusing that power for our own satisfaction.” Monroe finished setting up a new game. “Let’s try this. A new game, but I’ll play it like you. I won’t look, I’ll keep it in my head.”

Hawthorne grew still. Too still. Monroe had schooled stray fledglings, even set a couple of wayward Ventrue on the agoge, and the presentation of the undead — unblinking, unbreathing, statue stillness — was always the most difficult. Hawthorne had picked it up in her years, but the haunted weight settled on her shoulders again. Something had happened in Westside.

“The Beast gets the better of all of us, sometimes,” he said softly. “I know—”

“You know nothing,” she said, but the anger and bitterness had been drained out of her. “Third pawn to C3.”

“I know you’re hungry, and always will be. I know you hear the voice of the Beast, for better or worse.”

“Damn it. Play the game,” Hawthorne warned, but there was no bite to her words.

She must’ve been starving, he realised. Likely, she didn’t even know her curse, the vessel type she must drink from. Did she hunt blind, in more ways than one? When he had offered the Embrace to her over the decades, she had insisted she wouldn’t become a monster. The mirror was no friend to kindred.

“I know you’re struggling to come to terms with feeding on humans,” he whispered. Monroe reached out a hand and put it on her knee.

Hawthorne didn’t flinch away. Her stoic expression fell inwards and her lip stiffened. “I didn’t even know I still had any humanity left in me,” she said, as though to herself. “Wish I could lose it.”

Monroe stroked her leg. “No, you don’t. You will, at some point. Eternity is too long that it won’t happen eventually, but it won’t help you. You will think of humans as cattle, of ghouls as slaves, of kindred as primal competitors. Resist.”

Hawthorne hesitated, but placed her hand over his. Her skin had always been so warm to the touch, but now, empty of life, felt temperate on his. “I… shouldn’t have tried to go it alone.”

It wasn’t an apology but Monroe didn’t need one.

“It was your choice,” he said fairly. “That is always in your power.”

“Why?” she asked, and he knew she didn’t ask about her ability to leave. Hurt rounded her shoulders and voice. Not hurt. Betrayal. “I need to know. You gave me your word. I thought that would’ve been good enough.”

Monroe left his chair to kneel next to her. “When I came upon your dead body, I had a choice to make. Sometimes there are no good choices, but the decision needs to be made regardless. I chose what I could live with. I won’t apologize for it.”

Hawthorne swallowed his words. “We all make hard decisions,” she said uncertainly.

Monroe returned to his chair. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

“I don’t.” She bit her lip and raised her head. “But, I do understand — what you mean about being able to live with what you do.”

“Thank you,” he said simply, “for that understanding.”

The smallest fraction of weight lifted from her shoulders and voice. Hawthorne traced the edge of the chessboard, her fingers playing over the edges and her back row. “Which set is it?” she asked.

“A new one,” he said. “I couldn’t find the others.”

Hawthorne smiled, a familiar smile that he knew so well. “There must be six back home.”

“And now we have seven.” He hesitated before continuing, “It’s wood. Just something I picked up online. The edges are a warble of chestnut and carved Celtic runes. The dark squares are almost black, but the wood has a tinge of red in it. The light ones are basically ivory, but swirled with grey. The pieces correspond to the wood and look vaguely Celtic, too.”

Hawthorne picked up the king and brushed her thumb over it. “Why did you give me the white? I never play white.”

“Because the white set are elves. I thought you would like them.”

Her smile grew and she held onto the elf king. “Make your move, Monroe.”

They played another game in a quiet, friendly competition that almost made Monroe forget his struggles of the last weeks. Hawthorne won, honestly, this time.

They had just been about to set up another game when Ritter stood and waited, unobtrusively at the edge of Monroe’s eye.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Sir, he would like a private rendezvous with you tonight, at midnight.”

Monroe started but Ritter showed no sign it was anything other than another meeting with Pieterzoon. They had met twice since, in dark anonymous cars, as Monroe relayed anything of use and Pieterzoon thought quietly. He felt like a low crook each time. A traitor. Part of the purges’ blood was on his hands.

Reluctantly but without a choice, Monroe followed Ritter outside again, taking care to not be seen by human eyes. Neither said a word as Ritter delivered him. Monroe wanted to ask about Hawthorne, how she faired with her disability and mood and feeding on Ritter, how Blue Moon was running now that it slipped into intermediary hands. But all thoughts fled him, leaving him barren with fear.

When Ritter pulled to the curb in front of a museum, Monroe frowned. It was the LA County Museum of Art, a place he had mentioned in passing to Ritter several times. The art installment in the courtyard, a hundred ivory streetlamps, pressed tight like a forest.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

Ritter smiled wanly. “I’m sorry, sir, but I suspect I know less than you.”

It was exactly the type of place Pieterzoon loathed. Cubes of frosted blue glass, steel cages, and white slate. Offensively modern. It was New Years Eve and the LACMA had been closed all day. The scale of the place felt abandoned.

Ritter left him quick, as soon as Monroe entered the first building. It had been unlocked. Cameras hung at every corner, but he knew them to be unmonitored. The campus was too large to have eyes everywhere. Rather, the cameras deterred the lower-ranking thieves.

White walls and black floors gleamed with an almost-mirror shine. Steel block letters advertised different wings. The reception and ticket desks were empty. Only half the lights had been turned on, leaving patches of blackness between the exhibits and down corridors.

Footsteps on the floors set his heart in his throat before Pieterzoon rounded the corner. “Happy Embrace night, cousin,” he said. “What is it now?”

Embrace nights, regardless how neonates and ancillae conducted them, were formal holidays in the clan. They were not birthdays. It was a recounting of a year’s deeds, extolling dignitas, and praise by the eldest Ventrue, who was typically the prince or primogen.

Or archon.

Monroe could scarcely think to answer. “Eighteen-seventy-three, so, thirteen decades tonight.”

“One hundred thirty years ago, a disgraced former whip of Paris sired what was to be his only legacy,” said Pieterzoon. “Alastair Fowler does not deserve remembrance in your blood. He is unworthy. He embodied the sins and vices of our clan, as you are its virtues. Come with me.”

Monroe followed, stunned into mute silence. If Pieterzoon was so insistent on going through with this clan custom, he should’ve done it at elysium with all the other city’s Ventrue. Pieterzoon had a plan. Worse still, how much of what he said was merely expected and how much his own thoughts?

The exhibits passed by without a second glance. At a round table in the center of the rotunda, stood a long black box. Alongside, several bottles of wine, a decanter of whiskey, and accompanying glasses.

Monroe tore his attention from the box. If he thought of what lay within, he would surely break. He reached for a bottle. As soon as the cork came out, the unmistakable scent of blood and grapes left. Rubio. It was bloodwine. 

“Mr Rubio sells to those who treat him with respect,” said Pieterzoon. “Even those he does not recognise.”

As Monroe poured, he made a note to have a word with Rubio. Telling him not to sell outside the domain would be akin to a death sentence, but worse callers than Pieterzoon could take advantage of him.

Monroe passed a glass to Pieterzoon, clinked, and drank.

Pieterzoon smiled thinly. He set the glass down and reached for his own whiskey. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

Monroe passed a hand over the box. Heavy, covered in black linen, surely lined within with gold and blue. “Mr Pieterzoon, I—”

“Jan, please, Matthew.”

The invitation threw him off-guard. “Jan,” he forced himself to say, “I never expected to receive the first century’s Embrace night gift.”

“Do you feel unworthy of it?”

“No.” Monroe struggled to find a way to not insult him.

Jan pressed him. “Drink, if you must, but I would appreciate plain honest words more than a stream of slop and fanciful lies.”

Monroe drank. “I can’t help but feel it’s a bribe,” he said. “I passed my first century long before we met. In New York, I spent eight years at your side planning the siege. Eight Embrace nights, eight miserably formal parties of the city’s Ventrue, of useless trinkets and gifts given by all of them. Why give me this now?”

Jan considered that. “I think it is high time you have caught up with the clan milestones you have missed, and not by your own fault, might I add.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said irritably. “Sir,” he tacked on.

Jan set down his untouched drink. “As humanity has embraced the lie, so have we been forced to pay lipservice, but we cannot afford to shy from the truth. The clans are not equal. You and I are not superior for the blood we carry. Indulge me a moment. A Brujah and a Ventrue come across a fresh corpse. One pours blood down its throat. Until it frenzies or feeds, how can the fledgling’s clan be determined?”

Still, he had not answered. 

“Is there a point to this fable?”

“The answer is that it cannot be. Ventrue are not sired,” he said calmly. “We are shaped. We have created ourselves to be rulers and devoted our endless nights to it because, simply, someone must. We have earned it, fought for it, learned to serve each other in order to rule. We are the Clan of Kings, not because Caine named us, but because we did.”

Bitterness followed the bloodwine down Monroe’s throat. “That clan doesn’t exist. You can’t be such a fool. It’s not real.”

“You are. I am.”

Jan’s voice held such fierceness, that Monroe struggled to hold his eye. More than anything, though, he pitied him. Once, Monroe had held the same desperate hope. 

“Two out of thousands. Tens of thousands.”

Jan laid a hand on Monroe’s shoulder. “Two are all we need to begin again.”

Then, he turned to the artworks. Monroe knew little about art, personally, though he had occasionally gone with Hawthorne and recognised the piece as a Van Gogh. Mustard yellow flowers in a blue vase.

In a futile effort to banish Jan’s words, Monroe refilled his glass and drank. What had he gotten himself into? Hawthorne was right. He should’ve let the boon and his honour die. Now, he had sealed himself as a desperate elder’s pawn, in the center of a war that surely would tear LA apart.

“A number of Toreador in Amsterdam had taken a liking to Vincent Van Gogh while he still lived,” said Jan distantly. “Before he relocated to Paris, they shanghaied him out of what little he had painted for a pinnace. When Hardestadt, my sire, finally allowed me to take position as his steward of Amsterdam, I managed to remove them from the private elysia and into a museum. Alberta Hegmann has never quite forgiven me.” He hung his head and wandered onto the next paintings. “I look forward to her complaints of my every action upon my return.”

The way he said  _ my return _ made it clear to Monroe that he didn’t expect to go back to Amsterdam any time soon. The homesickness bit deep.

“San Francisco used to have ships,” said Monroe, scarcely realising what he was saying. “A half dozen historical ships docked at the pier, and most were used for elysium. Each attempted to out-do the other, to win favours and popularity. Court preferred Sebastian Melmoth’s, as it tended old-fashioned and formal. Most of the neonates and ancillae boarded Greg’s, though. It had jazz and could attract a hundred vessels by serving booze during Prohibition.”

Jan smiled to himself. “It still does. I was on the  _ Lonely Gale _ only last year.”

A thousand questions curdled on his tongue. Surely, as humans knew it, San Francisco was a new city after sixty years. Kindred, though, had a different timescale. Barty had survived, the elysia ships, what else? 

“When freed from my agoge,” continued Jan, “I commissioned a manor on the river. At dusk, the streetlights reflect on the water like stars. I’ve left it in the care of staff, for now.”

“My apartment’s been untouched the last sixty years,” said Monroe, thinking of the vision Ryuko had shown him all those weeks ago. Ghosts hung around him. There should’ve been another dozen Ventrue: the primogen, the whip, all the positions of a Board. “I miss New York.”

Jan turned, surprised. “New York?”

“It was the only time I felt like a Ventrue,” confessed Monroe. “Respected in the clan. And I know it was only because you tied me to you. I… Maybe because of that, I shouldn’t miss it so much. But I do. Even if the rest never considered me enough to stand on my own, I had a place in the hierarchy. I knew what to do, had superiors to guide me, associates to assist me. If I shut my eyes, I could pretend the whole machine even worked.”

“You can still operate for the betterment of others in a corrupt system,” said Jan, and Monroe understood why it was the two of them there tonight. Any word they exchanged could’ve spelled social disaster for a Ventrue. They both needed the honesty of shared vision.

“I’m…” Monroe swallowed desperately. “I’m afraid. I’m afraid of not being able to make the right decision, and not recognising it when it’s there.”

“What would be your ‘right decision’?” asked Jan softly.

“The one that keeps my people alive.”

Jan smiled, genuine, and stepped closer. Frustration and longing hid deep in his eyes. They were pale as ghosts. He sighed. “I was going to make you Prince of New York.”

The glass slid from Monroe’s hand and shattered on the ground. “ _ What? _ ”

“I was going to make you Prince of New York,” he repeated. “When Prince Michelea had been assassinated, I came to you and asked your opinion on a new prince.”

Monroe dragged a hand through his hair, horrified. He felt sick. He remembered the moment, could still see it. Jan had returned from the doomed peace talk, where the prince had lost her head. He was saddened but resolute. And he had quizzed Monroe. Why had Monroe helped Prince Michelea against the Sabbat? What motivated him? Why did he leave the clan? What qualities are most important in a prince?

Monroe thought he had come to him for aid. It had been a job interview. 

Monroe had named a local Nosferatu elder, who still held the crown.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” he said weakly.

“Never,” said Jan. “Now, though, I am thinking you would prefer San Francisco rather than Los Angeles.”

“What about Barty?” he asked.

Jan shook his head. “You are too blinded by old relations to see it. You told me yourself that the Anarchs would never accept a prince who purged them.”

“No.”

The word escaped him and stopped Jan mid-track. He pulled back, confused.

“No? What do you mean?”

Monroe struggled to make his still lungs work for more words. “No.”

He understood now Jan’s plans. He never was returning to Amsterdam because, like his sire, he planned to create a new state. Already, the Princes of San Diego, Sacramento, and San Francisco were indebted to him. And Monroe was his Prince of Los Angeles. He would chase out the praxis, which was no more than a smoke and mirrors puppet show to send Victoria Ash back to San Francisco with Barty, and, as Jan had told him before, the LA Anarchs would more accept a ruler from within than without.

“No.”

Jan drank from his whiskey. “Open the box,” he said heavily.

“I haven’t earned it.”

“You earned it thirty years ago. When you allow me to crown you, you will receive the other.”

Monroe struggled with the latches on the case. It opened soundlessly. Inside, as he had expected, a gleaming steel sword sat in blue silk. Gold inlaid across the guard, roped with blue. His seal stamped in the pommel. Etched down the blade was a word.  _ Arete _ . Ancient Greek, from where Artemis Orthia’s descendents drew from, and meaning high virtue, perfection of efficiency, the fulfillment of purpose and potential. 

Ventrue received the sword, the mark of leading their equals and inferiors, on their one hundredth Embrace night, and the scepter, the mark of leading the clan, on their two hundredth. It was an old tradition, one of the few kept by New World Ventrue. Only with both, in the Old World, were kindred supposed to be allowed to rule as princes.

As far as pawns went, there were worse masters and worse positions. 

Monroe lifted the sword. He had little experience with weapons, let alone ones such as this, but knew what came next. As did Jan. Monroe held it by the blade, crossguard at eye-level. Jan reached out to wrap his hand around above. His blood trickled down across Monroe’s hand. In the silent and half-dark museum, it smelled heady and delicious. Their bloods mixed down the blade, dripping to the ground.

“Matthew Monroe,” said Jan softly, “of the Clan of Kings, Ninth of the Line of Artemis Orthia, childe of Alastair Fowler, do you swear on your blood and that which came before you to fulfill the purpose of Clan Ventrue to your greatest potential?”

“Yes,” he said, and he did not know what exactly he said yes to.

“Excellent.”


	19. Ocean House

Jack didn’t exactly get  _ bad feelings _ , but he didn’t have great feelings when he entered Blue Moon in the basement that night. Charlie’s new nerd herd sat in the corner, boisterous and well drunk. Books and papers spilled onto tables. Couple more thinbloods bonked heads over drinks. Too sober himself, Jack sat in front of Alice Zhao.

She pulled a draft of beer for him and he drank most of it in one.

“Thirsty night?” she asked curiously.

Jack wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Had to be careful. In the eighties, he and Ryuko had argued bad and spent almost a year apart. Rubio’s beer hadn’t been kind to him, then. He had to pace himself. Just the one tonight.

“You have no idea,” he said to himself.

Alice leaned across the counter and took his hands. She always burned a few degrees hotter than other vampires. Delilah had Embraced her a few decades ago on a whim and hadn’t thought about chasing her down when she ran away. Jack always liked the chubby woman.

“Heard you have a man in your life,” said Jack, trying to sound cheerful and not doing a great job of it.

Alice bit her lip. “Nothing’s official.”

“Vampires gossip.”

She drew circles on the back of his hand. “I hate vampires,” she said with a fanged smile. “It was two dates, if we can even  _ call _ them that. Two. Manny is—”

“Rubio?” asked Jack in mock surprise. “I was hearing you got back good with Ashley—”

Alice groaned in disgust and hit him playfully. “Don’t be so mean, Jack! Remember, I can always poison your drinks.”

“Then, I guess I better savour this one slowly,” he said.

She turned back and poured a series of varied bloods into a cocktail shaker. Jack wondered if Rubio had given her some more vamp-friendly mix-ins. Alice poured the frothy results into a warmed nick and nora glass.

“Something new?” he asked. He gave it a go. It had the fatty gamey taste of animals, balanced with the acidic bite that came from humans in poor health and anger. The anger spiced it further. “It’s pretty damn tasty.”

She grinned. Along with her fangs came a mouthful of crooked teeth. “Thanks. Just a little something I’ve been working on with Manny.” Alice’s eyes wandered him. “Relationship problems?” she asked. “Was I finally right? You and Zari—”

“No,” said Jack firmly, before that rumour could get feet again. “I just…” He spun the bloodtail in his hands. “I’m living on hope, right now, I guess. Hope that what we’ve been building for so long is gonna hold strong. Thick and thin.”

Alice leaned forward. “You thinking of joining Downtown again?”

“What? No.”

“I’m just saying,” she said intently, “you wouldn’t be the first Chinese person to want to dip out and join the Bone Flowers. I think about it sometimes. Heard there’s a new gang, even, in Chinatown. Chinese, too, of course. Nines didn’t let them in. Supposedly, every time the Last Round goes to clear them out, there’s nothing there. Like ghosts.”

“I’m not going nowhere,” said Jack, even as he thought. It hadn’t been what he was thinking about, but getting a break from seeing Ryuko, hearing about the Hollowmen, looking at Monroe and knowing he helped fuel Ryuko’s descent into vampire society — it might be what he needed. Mai had been welcoming, when Jack saw her last, but who knew? Maybe the new gang was even better. “Besides, I’d rather let Ashley Swan cut my balls off than live a night under a Nines threatened by the Sabbat.”

“That’s real, then?” she asked with a small gasp. “The Sabbat broke East LA? You—”

Alice broke off suddenly and her expression wavered, staring at something behind him, nervous, excited. A heavy hand wrapped around Jack’s arms, and he found himself staring up at Blake Swan. If it wasn’t common knowledge who sired him, Jack never would’ve guessed. Blake was a lighthouse squeezed into three-dollar t-shirts and beaming a thousand watt grin.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” said Blake. “How’s life going, the two of you?” He reached for Jack’s beer and drank the rest.

“Fine,” said Jack with a tense smile. “Just peachy.”

“What about you, doll? That snake treating you alright? You know, if he crosses any line…” Blake mimed punching the air. “Eh?”

Alice tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and laughed. “Keep off Manny. He’s a good guy.”

“I just want to make sure my favourite niece isn’t running fang-first into trouble, you know?” said Blake, concerned. “You know, Ashley says that when you think with your head, fangs ain’t included in that.”

“I’m fine,” Alice insisted, fighting a smile. “Really.”

Blake nodded, content. “Good. Good. Nice to catch up a minute. Jack, we gotta take care of a… thing.”

“What sorta thing?”

“Private sorta thing.”

The way he said it make Jack think he was running as Ashley’s messenger. Blake wasn’t exactly the secret type.

Reluctantly, Jack followed Blake out into the parking lot.

“Sorry for being all cagey back there,” said Blake, “but everyone’s talking to everyone else above us. Trying to deal things quiet, you know? Zari talks to Ashley, he talks to Monroe. Captain says look into Orsay. Orsay’s expensive as fuck. You know how it goes.”

“Zari,” said Jack. His still blood ran cold. “It was you guys,” he said quietly. “Ashley — He convinced Zari to go —” He lowered his voice even more. “ _ Spy _ .”

Blake raised his hands. “Whoa, hold up a minute. Shit weren’t me. Like I said, everyone talks. Things happen. I don’t go sticking my nose where it don’t belong. I can ask Ashley, though, try to talk things out, nice and smooth.”

Jack bit back his anger. Of course,  _ of course _ Monroe would never send her out. It was way too dangerous that far behind enemy lines. Ashley wanted to play all sides, just in case they lost this. But it wasn’t Blake’s fault he was chained to that double-dealing bastard.

“Alright,” said Jack. “What’s up?”

“Zari wants a favour,” said Blake. “At first, she said go to you, but Ashley wasn’t so convinced and Monroe told him to find it elsewhere. Ashley’s hoping your price is cheaper than Orsay.”

“What does Zari want?”

Blake took a deep breath. “It’s like this. She’s making friends with the Voermans, all peace-like, and Therese offers her a boon. Big fucking deal, right? So, there’s this hotel in Santa Monica. Called Ocean House. A ghost’s chased out her contractors. Minor boon to clear it out.”

Jack stared. Zari hadn’t ratted him out. Ashley was hunting for a way to destroy the ghost, because he didn’t know about Ryuko. Zari did. And Monroe had told Ashley fo find another way.

They had kept his secret. Even if Ryuko was flirting with disaster.

Blake stuck his hands in his pockets. “How’d you feel about helping out our girl? What’s your price?”

“Nothing.” Jack knew he could probably extort Blake, maybe even Ashley. Monroe’d like that, have something else over the Swans. But that wasn’t Jack’s game. “I’ll do my best,” he said.

Blake offered a fist bump. “I  _ said _ you were the man! Oh, man, you know, you and me should see if we can set up a game. Nerd herd aren’t the only ones who can play teams. Any bloodsport — football, soccer, dodgeball — we should hang, since our main guys are tight now, you feel?”

Jack smiled wanly. He always forgot how much he liked Blake. “We’ll see,” he said. “I’ll be back later tonight.”

He tensed and sprung, exploding into a burst of black feathers and wings. Blake whooped and howled like an ant below. Jack sprung for a victory lap before disappearing off into the night.

For a minute, he considered heading to the Ocean House first, just in case. Maybe he could figure it out himself. Find out who the ghost was, find their tether, burn it. That could take ages, though. Ryuko and he could clear it in a matter of hours.

The Hollowmen had taken a dusty and disused cathedral in Los Feliz as their haven. They kept to themselves. Sometimes, one or two showed up at Blue Moon, had a few drinks, maybe fed or listened to a band, and then left. Interest dogged them and, when a brave soul approached, they talked freely about Caine and Gehenna. Sometimes, Jack saw them. The quiet thinblood girl, Rosa, asked a lot of nonsense questions. He worried about the rest of the domain. What could he do, though? Let the Anarchs scream about religious freedom if he asked Monroe to crack down? 

The streets around the cathedral deteriorated and, at night, weren’t the best places to wander. The presence of the ex-Sabbat hadn’t helped. Jack dropped from the sky onto two legs. The gothic cathedral towered over all other buildings in the area. Within, stained glass windows depicted saints and angels, but the darkness leached their colour. Dozens of tiny flames in the racks of votive candles flickered. 

At the altar, Azalea, the leader of the Hollowmen, raised her hands and continued. Shadow billowed like living smoke around her. As the door shut behind Jack, eyes found him before turning back to Azalea.

“Every one of you carries the blood of the Dark Father in your veins,” she said. “Potential and opportunity, if we look to the life of Caine — the strength, the independence, to know we have ascended to become more than mere mortals. In the Fragments…” 

Vampires didn’t burn in churches. At some places of worship, the human faith in the divine was so strong it seeped into the earth. Then, it rose hackles and forced the Beast through fangs and growls. Jack didn’t like churches. Even if he didn’t combust, he knew he didn’t belong here.

He leaned against the door in hopes of keeping it shut. Even at night, humans could come in easy. They would be dinner, he knew. Jack listened as long as he could stand. Lucky for him, she was almost done.

“Caine does not need worship,” Azalea concluded. “He is not the False One Above, greedy for praise he will never hear. He needs loyal Cainites. Followers to enforce their will, to destroy the traitorous Antediluvians, to crush the Danse of Ages, and unite before the Basalt Throne.”

Her words turned darker and slipped into Latin. Jack knew enough to follow the rite.  _ Something something blood that binds… freedom in unity before the two-by-three… Dark Father, Wanderer, King of the Basalt Throne… Dark Mother, Harlot, Black Moon.  _

Azalea’s childe brought forward a giant silver chalice. Jack resisted the urge to stop the rite as one by one, the rest of the Hollowmen stood from the front row of the pew, and added their blood to the chalice. A handful of others had stopped by for the sermon. There, the thinblood Rosa, Slater and Jeff Sullivan from the Reapers. And Ryuko.

Jack wondered how mage blood would fuck with the vampire rite. Nothing exploded when the cup reached Ryuko and he drank. Nothing but Jack’s heart.

The congregation broke up quickly. Ryuko talked animatedly with Azalea and the Hollowmen’s Nosferatu, a gargoyle-looking motherfucker. Didn’t even Obfuscate. Jack braced his shoulders and moved to join them.

“The Intuition face has always been the dark side of the Moon,” Ryuko was saying. “Suffering, in the soul of the Watchtower’s eye, breaks keener.”

Azalea’s wheelchair glided without sound, rising off to floor to meet Ryuko’s eyes on level. She extended a hand and he leaned into the solemn gesture. “Children of Darkness know all their faces, learn all their lessons. Your Mother waits, impatiently, for you to reach out.”

“I am,” said Ryuko desperately. “I swear. I don’t know anything more. You have all my—” He broke off as Azalea’s eyes drifted behind him.

Jack raised an awkward hand in greeting. The look that met him struck him hard, though. Ryuko’s brow wrinkled, not just confused but offended.

“What are you doing here?” Lost hope glittered. “Jack, were you here the whole sermon?”

“No,” Azalea answered for him. She drifted lower, her eyes black like yawning pits. “No. I think your… friend is here, not for Caine, but for himself.”

“For you, actually,” said Jack.

Ryuko grimaced, every nerve tense. He was frightened, Jack realised suddenly. Last time they had spoke, Ryuko had mentioned mutual benefit. Didn’t look so mutual.

“Jack,” said Ryuko in a hard voice. “I need my own life, with my own people—”

“There are  _ not _ your people,” snapped Jack before he could stop himself.

He didn’t know what was happening but it wasn’t any kind of good.

The look Ryuko gave him made him regret opening his mouth.

None of them understood, least of all Ryuko, and Jack couldn’t make them understand, least of all Ryuko. Mostly because  _ he _ didn’t understand. Ryu was mortal, had a chance for a nice human life, and wanted to throw it all in the gutter to play fake fangs with monsters. This was so beneath him — a  _ mage _ , a powerful mage who could see any time he wanted, step into the sci-fi future-city of the year five-thousand, or watch the first buildings of LA be set. Ryuko could heal humans and licks, build illusions as real as anything, manipulate the ley lines like highways with a jackhammer, time travel.

And it was never enough.

“Can I get a minute?” asked Jack thickly.

With one more desperate whispered exchange with Azalea, Ryuko followed Jack back down the aisle, though he made it clear he didn’t want to leave.

“Hey,” said Jack awkwardly.

Ryuko smiled. “Hey.”

He looked no different. Maybe he wore full-length cargo pants and actual shoes instead of crocs, but there was still a tie-dye t-shirt three sizes too big and too many necklaces. The minute lines engraved in his forehead from too much scowling had smoothed out.

A good ten feet separated them, neither willing to break the invisible wall. Jack could read five languages and speak three. He couldn’t think of a single word.

“Budge over, man,” Slater complained.

Jack and Ryuko stepped to the side as Slater and Jeff left. The wall crumpled into rubble, each word only adding to it.

“Good… service?” Jack tried.

Ryuko nodded, accepting it as an apology. “It was alright. I like the ones about Gehenna better.”

“Gehenna—” Jack swallowed his thoughts. They weren’t wanted.

Ryuko glanced at him. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. “For not interrupting.”

“I’m here for you, so long as you can stand me,” said Jack. He tried smiling crookedly but his mouth pulled flat.

Ryuko made a show of inspecting Jack. “I see no flowers.”

“I brought you something better,” he said. “A haunting.”

Ryuko perked up with a bright smile. “Oh, really? That’s sweet. Who, what, where, when?”

Jack felt bitter at lying like this. He hadn’t even thought of pitching the favour as a gift for Ryu until he spotted the necklaces again. Maybe it wasn’t lying. Just, mutual benefit.

“You and me. Santa Monica hotel. Tonight.”

Ryuko needed no more convincing. He came along, just as easily as if Jack had stopped by the revival theatre. He hummed to himself, long fingers tapping a rhythm on the steering wheel as they got into his car. It should’ve been normal, maybe. But a thick blanket covered them and put normal just out of reach.

“So.” Jack took a deep breath. “Do they know what you are?”

Ryuko seemed surprised. “Yes. Didn’t you hear about Lilith?”

“I came late,” said Jack sourly.

Ryuko chuckled, misunderstanding. “Azalea likes to host ritae twice a week. You can come next Monday. There’s blood for Cainites afterwards.”

_ Cainites _ . That wasn’t his word. Ryuko had found  _ night-folk _ in an old forgotten journal through the leylines. He latched onto the word with glee, even when Jack begged him to just say vampire. Like a normal person.

“Soon,” said Jack, “the whole city’ll know there’s a mage around. Word travels fast. Slater and Jeff will tell the rest of the Reapers. Rosa spreads it to thinbloods, then it gets into Blue Moon. Nita tells Ashley, who works with Jeanette Voerman. The Westside Prince. Downtown. Nines. The Valley Prince. Fuck, the  _ real  _ Sabbat.”

Ryuko didn’t seem all that bothered. “Which hotel in Santa Monica? Where is it?”

“Ocean House,” said Jack impatiently. “Aren’t you listening—”

“Yes,” he snapped. “Better than you. Don’t you think Monroe  _ likes _ having a mage on retainer? Wouldn’t he want to make sure I don’t die, even if the whole city finds out?”

“Monroe can’t protect you from the whole world,” Jack warned.

“No. Maybe not. But I can protect myself.”

Ryuko didn’t say another word the rest of the way. He must’ve had the hotel pegged as a possible haunting, because he drove right up to the place. At least, it might’ve been the place. The stately manor house was locked behind chain link fences. Construction equipment glowed a dingy yellow in the darkness. All was quiet.

Jack scaled the gate easily and dropped down, only to see Ryuko having already swung his way through the leylines. He vanished with one step, appearing a dozen yards inside the gate with the next. 

“See something you like?” asked Jack. His eyes were drawn to the vial on Ryuko’s neck. Full of blood. Used to be Jack’s. Then, once, Monroe’s. Now, who knew?

Ryuko breathed in the must. “The nexus isn’t nearly as amazing as the screen at the revival theatre, but the crossing of pathos imprint is almost as dense.”

“Lots of ghosts?”

“Lots of ghosts.”

The lawns might’ve been neatly tended once, but the machines had worked gravel over it. Grass and weeds sprouted in between the tracks left behind in gravel and crumbly dirt.

“Got the equipment to deal with ghosts?” asked Jack.

Ryuko glared. It was a familiar glare, not meant in any real spirit. Jack almost smiled, but he knew that would only really piss him off.

“You just worry about you and I worry about me,” said Ryuko waspishly. “How’s that sound?”

The doors had been left unlocked. Inside, it was the same snooty old-fashioned finery gone to waste. Crown moulding chipped away, ornate railings around the grand staircase broke off pieces. The wallpaper felt dingy and even the fancy rugs frayed. A couple of distant lights on the upper floor kept it from being pitch black, but only just. With every step, glass and pottery crunched. Broken vases and portraits had been thrown. Some portraits with enough force to shatter their frames. 

“Lots of angry ghosts,” offered Jack in a whisper.

Ryuko grimaced. “Let’s try and find a basement.”

The brass chandelier shook violently. Lights on the second floor flickered.

“We’re not here to disturb you,” said Jack. “We just want to talk with the spirits of the Ocean House.”

“We won’t try the basement,” said Ryuko.

The chandelier and lights steadied.

Ryuko and Jack exchanged a look. Basement it was, then.

Apparently the ghosts weren’t stupid. A remaining ceramic trinket in a china cabinet trembled for a brief moment. The only warning before it shot straight at Jack’s head. He took the impact in the face and felt it shatter. Pain spread, throbbing, across his cheek. Shrapnel lanced Ryuko’s arm and blood welled.

The smell of blood gave Jack pause. He snarled and shoved the hunger back, but healing only fed the Beast’s strength.

“Listen, you plasmic bastards,” said Ryuko angrily. “I am a  _ mage _ . I can speak with you, understand you, and, in fact, yes,  _ see _ you. Yes,  _ you _ , Mr Tall and Pissed Off up there. I’m sure you’re having fun haunting this godforsaken place, but—”

Another ceramic shook on the table, clacking around.

Jack threw himself at Ryuko and they stumbled to the ground. The edge of the plate tore straight through the wallpaper behind him.

It was closer, physically, than they had been in a while. Too long. Ryuko hated being reminded of Jack’s strength, his reflexes, his durability. He hated playing damsel in distress, as if he could ever be mistaken for weak. He would never say thank you, never apologize, but they were close enough that Ryuko couldn’t hide his silent appreciation.

The invisible wall melted.

Jack could feel Ryuko’s breath, harried from the sudden attack, hot on his lips. For a moment, nothing had changed.

Jack pulled them both up. “Maybe don’t antagonize the ghosts.”

A third ceramic trembled.

“Basement,” said Ryuko, already taking off.

Jack followed. They passed an elevator and an empty, dusty bar. Portraits shot off the walls next to them. Teacups chased them like missiles. Jack took several more hits before Ryuko found the stairwell and slammed the door.

Ryuko panted doubled over, a hand to his chest. “How… are you?”

Jack took inventory. “Ten fingers, ten toes, one head. I think I’m fine.”

Far from fine, really. Throbbing bruises radiated from where the objects smashed through him, skin opened bloodlessly. Jack healed carelessly over chips of glass. He would need to dig those out later. 

He should’ve finished that bloodtail Alice had made him. Hunger ate at him.

Ryuko glared. “Why don’t… you let… me heal you?”

“You worry about you, I worry about me,” said Jack wearily. “Isn’t that how this goes?”

Ryuko put a hand to his chest, his breaths strained and hoarse.

“You sure you’re alright?” asked Jack.

Ryuko bit savagely into a necklace and leaned on the railing for support as they continued down. Jack stayed ready to catch him if he fell. Worry etched on his tongue.  _ Go to a doctor. Get this checked out by humans. _

There was, also, the other possibility.

“Did you drink the… blood mix from that silver cup?” asked Jack in a voice of forced calm.

Ryuko paused and spat out the charm. “Yes,” he said tersely. “I do. As tasty as Cainite jungle juice is, it’s not exactly a healing potion.”

Jack breathed a sigh of relief. He had watched Hawthorne take bullets, break an ankle, even once catch on fire. She latched onto Monroe’s wrist and was almost good as new. At least, before. Arthritis or something more sinister should’ve been healed. Jack didn’t know how vampires and mages mixed. Apparently, they didn’t. Ryuko hadn’t been ghouled by the Hollowmen. Small mercy.

The stairs ended in a pitch black maintenance room. Jack barely had turned on his night vision when Ryuko flipped on a tiny flashlight on his keychain. The sudden brightness blinded him. Jack exploded in a stream of curses.

Ryuko snickered and shut it off. “Tell me when.”

Rubbing his eyes, Jack grumbled. “When.”

Jack followed, still seeing spots.

The ghosts ran around upstairs. Maybe they thought they were frightening. Two, three, four pairs of feet?

“Who did you see upstairs?” asked Jack.

“Tall and ugly, a white man,” said Ryuko. “Fat. Dark suit with a hat and one of those scarf-ties.”

The sound of pair of girls crying joined the footsteps. Then, they all seemed to phase from the upper floor, dragging through the levels to down that left corridor.

“Dad and daughters?” asked Jack.

“Haven’t seen the girls, oh, wait.”

They had come to an intersection. Through the flashlight beam, running off to the right, a pair of little girls in white and blue dresses stained black at the hems. Following them, at a leisurely stroll, the tall dark suited man. It wasn’t the ghosts, though. Only an imprint, probably of their moments before death.

Ryuko looked both ways before crossing the busy intersection. “Dad murdered daughters.”

“You smelled that?” asked Jack.

The black stains of the girls’ dresses must’ve been soot. Fire and ash and burned hair. It lingered in the imprint.

Ryuko nodded. “Are you gonna be able to handle yourself?”

“Looks like I’m gonna have to.” Jack shook his head. “If we have to find these girls’ ashy dresses, that’s grim as fuck.”

“Oh, they didn’t burn,” said Ryuko indifferently. He gestured along a leyline only he could see. “Dad chopped off their heads and stuck them in the dryer before hiding them in the foundations. Just down that hall. Might need to burn the skulls, though.”

Jack whirled and felt sick at the idea of checking it out.

“I thought  _ I _ was supposed to be the nightmare monster,” he said. “And you’re the sensitive wise wizard.”

“Mage,” said Ryuko testily. Then, he softened. “If you think that, you clearly haven’t been paying attention. Ah, this looks good.”

They had come to a wide open drainage room, with only the one door. The crumbling stone walls felt a little more sturdy. Jack leaned against the door as Ryuko doodled with blood. Symbols, numbers, connecting lines. It was like an equation, each icon a different magical word. This one for drawing attention, connected to Ryuko’s own mark, then to the locational mark. 

He stepped back to admire his work.

“Whose blood?” asked Jack.

Ryuko’s eyes flashed. “Really? You want to argue  _ here _ ?”

“No, but—”

“Maybe it’s Caine’s,” he snapped. “Why should you care?”

Jack let it drop. It wasn’t that important. Not really. Shouldn’t be, at least, even though it was.

Ryuko sat in the middle of the floor. Four separate ghostly icons framed the head of the circle. 

“Mom the fourth, do you figure?” asked Jack.

Ryuko painted his hand with the blood and pressed hard to the first. Almost instantly, he drew back, shaking his hand like it had been burned. “Sorry,” he shouted. The tight walls bounced his voice back. “Wrong number.” The other two he dismissed as well. The fourth he lingered on, silently. Eyes shut, he communicated with it. The whole time, he might’ve been a statue.

Jack held the door, wary in case the dad came down, or the kids burst in — or the fire, so help him. But nothing did.

“Barbara Ingles,” said Ryuko, several minutes later. He sat back, wiping sweat from his forehead. “She married a nutcase, a millionaire who took it out on her when business soured. Blamed her for everything. Eventually… Dad did what Dad did. Beheaded the girls, killed his wife, the man he thought she cheated on him with, and then set fire to the place.”

Jack swallowed. “That really sucks.”

Ryuko nodded and stood unsteadily. “She’s fine, to lay to rest. I’m thinking her and the girls’ tethers is actually Dad’s wraith.”

His eyebrows shot up. “You think he’s an actual  _ wraith _ ?”

“What else throws shit around like this is  _ Poltergeist _ ? Anyway, she thinks all this might’ve been set off by a necklace her mother mailed to her. It was an old heirloom, but Dad thought her lover gave it.”

“Four ghosts, one tether,” said Jack. “Any idea where the necklace is?”

Ryuko scratched his head. “She remembers it being in her room. We could follow the leyline, see who has it now. This place burned down almost fifty years ago. Who knows how many thrift stores and charity auctions and estate sales its gone through?”

Jack pulled open the door. “Upstairs, then.”

“Upstairs.” Ryuko glanced at the elevator. “Any way we can avoid the stairs?”

Jack, not for the first time, wished he could turn into a horse. Even a donkey. Something that could give Ryuko a lift, but neither wolf nor panther was big enough to be more than a guide.

“Sure,” said Jack. He made himself limp a few steps. “I won’t be big on stairs either, for a while.”

Ryuko hit a button and the elevator slid up to the second floor. “Oh, those nasty teacup scars.” He smirked.

“Glass, actually.” Jack showed where the painting had slashed through his jeans. Even though he had healed over it, the glass pebbled his skin. A few bigger pieces did grind uncomfortably on his bones.

Ryuko stared, horrified, but then the elevator opened.

The tell-tale shimmy of a picture frame on wallpaper alerted him. Jack pushed Ryuko against the elevator wall, just in time for the picture to fly in and smash into the elevator. Too close and with nothing to stop him, Ryuko reached up and gave Jack a quick kiss. His lips were dry and cracked, burning with heat. Then, they were gone.

Jack stared.

Ryuko acted like he hadn't done anything. “When we get out, you’re gonna let me take a look at that.”

Jack turned his leg again. “Ah, it’s fine. It won’t be pretty to fish them out, but it won’t be the first time.”

The halls seemed endless. Ratty red runners crookedly curled against the walls. Sconces flickered dimly, only to tremble warningly. Jack took off his jacket to help Ryuko protect his head and eyes.

“If you lose an eye, that’s not growing back,” snapped Ryuko.

“But I won’t bleed out from it.”

A sconce burst, right by Jack’s ear. He threw up an arm quickly, but the bare arm lanced with pain as the larger pieces burrowed their way in. As many pieces glanced off, another embedded themselves in his flesh.

Funnily enough, they were able to track their progress by the amount of shaking lights. It was a terrible game of warmer-colder. Jack wished they could play a more harmless game.

When he smelled ash and the cold air grew warm, he knew they were on the right way.

Jack led Ryuko, the jacket hiked high over his ears and eyes like a hood. Ryuko hurried them, tense and thrown off by the shower of glass. When Jack put his hand on a brass doorknob, it burned hot. Fire. 

Every remaining light in the hall burst.

Right door.

When Jack hesitated, Ryuko peered over and pushed their way in.

_ Fire _ .

The primal fear ground his bones worse than the glass. He wanted to burrow, to fly, to flee from the reach of that  _ heat _ . A dozen Generations screamed in his blood. The survival impulse that ached in the Gangrel Beast. Run. Hide. Fly. Free. Further. Faster.

_ Fire. _

The bedroom was covered in the ghostly imprint of greying flames. They weren’t real. They smelled and felt real enough. Jack was rooted to the spot.

Ryuko pushed him in further and shut the door.

“Dad won’t come in here,” he said breathlessly. The jacket hung lank and oversize over his shoulders. “We’re safe. Look at me.” He put a hand on Jack’s face, turning it to him. “It’s only an imprint. A memory trapped in the Shadowlands. You and I have crossed past the Shadowlands, by way of the Watchtower and the way of Caine’s blood. Listen. It is not physical.”

Jack swallowed and tried to find his voice. It came hoarse, choked with smoke. “I know.”

Satisfied, Ryuko turned from him and investigated the leylines. The imprint lay over most of it. Once, the room had been reduced to ash. The bed, the drapes, the tables, the rugs. Fire curled, consuming. Hungry. Hungry for the Beasts, for flesh of vampires.

Focus.

Ryuko cheered, slicking a leyline with vitae as he found the one he looked for. For a moment, he vanished. Then, he reappeared in the same spot, as if he had never left.

He pulled open the walk-in closet. “It’s still here,” he called. “Daddy dearest hid it before — Get over here.”

Jack took one step, then another. The fire didn’t reach for him. The heat in the air was almost too much to stand, but he made it. Bit by bit. Ryuko crouched in the walk-in closet, tapping the walls.

“There used to be a safe in here,” he explained. “Back in the sixties, when they rebuilt this place after the fires, an underpaid and overworked construction crew decided to just plaster over it rather than—”

Ryuko grinned and tapped again. It was especially not-hollow.

Jack grew his nails long and jagged. Though better suited for rending flesh, they did an alright job of attacking drywall. The scorched safe pulled away in an iron heap. Brittle, it was simple to smash open. The money, which Ryuko swiftly pocketed, was untouched. Stacks of bills, and then a jewelry box. Pearls spilled out, rings rolling away in a clatter.

Ryuko lifted a dainty silver chain with an ornate locket on the end. “Groovy,” he declared. “Now, hand me the lighter and fluid. I’ll make sure we don’t burn this place down again.”

Jack felt that familiar sinking feeling. He knew he had forgotten something.

Ryuko scowled. “You didn’t.”

“Sorry,” he said weakly. “Why don’t we—”

Ryuko stood, glowering. “That father is  _ never _ going to let us leave with this. You’re already a pincushion. How could you be so stupid?”

“Maybe I was just excited,” said Jack desperately. “I haven’t seen you in weeks. You disappear—”

“Don’t turn this around on  _ me _ . I’m not talking about us. I’m talking—”

“It’s  _ always _ about us. One way or another.”

Glass trembled. But there were no half-empty china cabinets or pictures to throw. Then, Jack spotted the windows. He pulled the closet door shut, just as they exploded. Shards pierced the door like knives.

Ryuko backed up further, throwing the silver locket on with his other necklaces. “Don’t you even  _ think  _ about that.”

“Good thing I don’t think, right?” asked Jack.

He opened the door and dragged Ryuko. Ryu complained mightily, but he didn’t have much of a second to spare as Jack took him in his arms and leapt out the window. He tried to make the landing easy, but only managed to land on a pile of tarped-over gravel. His ankle cracked under him. At least Ryuko gave him a good shove and stood on his own.

“That was so stupid,” he cried. “I can’t believe you.”

“Wasn’t there a gas station down the road?” asked Jack, wincing as he crawled down from the pile. “I’m sure they sell lighters.”

Ryuko shut his mouth, but not willingly. It tensed into a stiff bitter line. But his eyes glimmered. Secretly, he was very pleased. He didn’t need to say it. He wouldn’t. But Jack knew anyways.

Weary and tired and hurt, they took the car to the gas station. Ryuko bought several bottles of lighter fluid and a handful of lighters. The spares for the car, he explained.

“This is why you’re the smart one,” said Jack, inspecting the limp offerings of flowers.

“Buy me Skittles and we’re even,” said Ryuko with a small smile.

Jack bought Skittles and Ryuko ate them on the way back to the Ocean House. Once back on the property, Ryuko sketched another circle of magic marks in blood. This time, by the front step. He carefully set the locket in the center, arranging his other necklaces around it. A spray of fluid, a click of a lighter, and the tether went up. 

Jack had watched him perform the ritual to recharge his charm necklaces a thousand times. It never got old. He watched from the car. Ryuko didn’t like Jack seeing him without the youth. The spirits expired as the tether’s flames grew stark white. Then, the smoke, too, went white and poured into the necklaces. Ryuko kicked the white ashes and blood aside and put on the charms again.

Jack prepared a gruff answer for Ryuko. He could deal with his own wounds. Vampires healed. It was how they worked. They didn’t just accept help. There was a little song and dance first.

Ryuko crawled back into the car. “So. Where do you want me to drop you off?”

Jack stared for a minute but when Ryuko didn’t bring up his wounds again, he shrugged and opened the door. “I can fly on my own. Nice seeing you.”

“Likewise,” he said cheerily.

Jack was half tempted to follow when Ryuko pulled away. It was late. That didn’t mean the Hollowmen were in bed. What bullshit could they get up to? What was Ryuko telling them? Research into the Abyss, the weird and terrifying Umbra spirit worlds, the metaphysical Watchtowers. What did vampires want with that? And how hard would the Hollowmen squeeze before they realised Ryuko didn’t know anything useful? 

To clear his head, Jack flew higher. Above the clouds. The cold rush of wetness rushed through his nostrils. The Beast cried, but he was determined to not let it free.

No hunters were lone hunters. The Gangrel Beast knew this well. Predators formed packs, bonds of blood and choice to face their night and struggles. To lose one, even temporary, was worse than a stake in the heart.

Worse still, he hadn’t lost Ryuko. He lost him the way he lost Damsel. Sure, she still looked the same, hit the same, sneered the same. But their worlds revolved different now. The most important thing in their lives made them different but the same, hollowed out shells for others’ selfish uses. And neither Ryuko nor Damsel could see it. If Jack hadn’t seen Damsel twist herself into knots over Nines, Jack probably wouldn’t have believed it either.

Before he even realised where he had flown, Jack realised he had landed on Sage Memorial’s rooftop. Jumping down, he resigned himself. Maybe he could get a minute alone with the animals, away from Melissa, and have a good night. 

That was all he wanted. A clear head, simple life.

The receptionist wasn’t Melissa, or Jodie, or Polly. It was some new guy. Greasy and curly dark hair framed a young face, his prominent nose stuck in a comic book. He wasn’t anything remarkable, but Jack swore he knew him from someplace. He jumped at the door as Jack came in.

“Uh, you need something?” asked the receptionist. 

“Did the girls mention me?” asked Jack. He tried to smile. “I’m sorta a volunteer that comes around, takes the kennels on walks, holds Archie when he’s being a little bitch.”

The guy made an awkward face and Jack realised how he must look. Like he had run through a blizzard of glass. His jacket and jeans were scratched pretty bad, though blood had healed his face to something passable.

“Uh, I — um, I think so. Jack something?”

“Jack Shen.”

“Right. Sorry, this is my first shift.” 

He gave Jack that sort of dazed look again and Jack realised where he knew him from. Charlie’s friend, that they had run into the first night. Zari had given him a too-hard shove against the wall and Monroe fixed his memories. Charlie mentioned him a few more times. Started with a D.

“That’s alright, man,” said Jack cagily. “Got a name?”

“Dustin. Dustin Cohen.”

“Yeah, that sounds right,” Jack muttered. He raised his voice. “Why don’t you come on in the back? Hang with the animals a while?”

Dustin blinked. “Thought they were supposed to be locked up.”

“Nah, they need good interaction and play, just like everyone else. Come on, I’ll show you.”

All hell broke loose as Jack worked to free the little bastards. Dustin needed a little more assurance that nothing ever happened late at night, but then he was cool to let them have the run of the place. Sure was better to read comics with a half dozen needy cats crawling over you.

“What’re you reading, anyway?” asked Jack. Pepsi and Cordelia claimed their traditional places on his lap as he sat on the floor, surrounded by the others. A gang of mutts found the toy basket Jodie kept hidden and started a tug-of-war.

Dustin held up his comic. “ _ X-Men _ .”

“I love  _ X-Men _ ,” said Jack with a grin. 

Dustin returned the smile, uncertainly. “Really? I’m a huge fan of Magneto. There’s not many Jewish heroes. I…” He fingered the edge of the comics. “I used to get into arguments with a friend of mine, whether Magneto was a hero or not.”

Charlie, probably. Jack tried to not feel guilty. “Anti-heroes are still heroes,” he said. “I basically grew up on comics. X-Men came around, what, early fifties?”

Dustin’s look grew funnier. “How old are you?”

“Uh.” Jack petted Pepsi. She arched her tail and waggled her kitty eyebrows. “Twenty… five?”

“Don’t seem very sure about that,” said Dustin with a smirk.

“Not big into celebrating birthdays. What about you?”

“Twenty, I’m in UCLA’s Zoology program,” he said. “I’m hoping to work in the zoo but, I could go back to school for veterinary. Animal doctor,” he added bitterly, “almost as good as human doctor.”

“To who?”

Dustin straightened him and sighed. “My parents. Between Doctor Danny and Lawyer Deborah, my parents figure they met their gifted child quota. Let’s me fuck off and do what I want the rest of my days. At least, that’s the way I see it. Sorta alone in that.”

“Lot to live up to,” said Jack quietly. “I know what that feels like.”

He cocked his head. “Really? What’d you do?”

Jack smiled wryly. “Became a plumber. Dad almost hit the roof when he heard, but — steady trade, union wages and benefits. He came around. Had a good thing going.”

“What happened?”

Skelter happened. A vampire into unions decided he liked the cut of Jack and became close friends, before turning him.

“Wasn’t for me,” said Jack eventually. “It wasn’t what I really wanted to do. Then, I wanted to be a mechanic, elbow-deep in an engine. Of course, that’s another step down from what my parents wanted, but who cares. Now…” He gave his attention back to the cats. “Now, I just want to be with my friends, have a good time, and be happy.”

“Hmm.” Dustin considered that, then quietly opened his comic book again. He didn’t read it, though. “I used to have a lot of friends.”

“I’m sorry,” said Jack. Then he heard how that sounded. “Uh, about the ‘used to’, not that you had friends.”

Dustin cracked a smile. “I got it. Thanks. I guess I like animals better. They’re easier to understand.”

Jack gestured to the room of scrabbling, clawing beasts. “That they are. It’s why I come around all the time.”

Satisfied, Dustin returned to his book in earnest and Jack watched the dogs play. It put his mind at ease. The shared quiet was comfortable. Easy. The familiar silky fur under his hands, the rhythmic brushing of the bigger dogs, set his whirring mind to ease. Almost made him forget his troubles.

Almost. The glass still ground against his bones.


	20. Warlocks

Zari felt equal parts prisoner and princess in the apartment in Santa Monica. Mercurio, a ghoul with a long square face and curious name, lived in the same building and existed at her beck and call. He had taken the key to her apartment in Los Feliz at once. By the end of the following day, he had moved the extent of her worldly possessions to her new place. Zari bristled at the invasion of privacy, of LaCroix knowing everything, but, what would LaCroix know, truly? That she liked plants? That she had expensive taste in interior design? 

The building itself was nothing to sniff at, pre-furnished and prepaid. Everything was taken care of. Elysium, too. She had her name on the list of any gathering and a sudden gaggle of friends who called her “miss” and laughed on command. 

It was like being a fledgling discovering Presence the first time.

Except this was real. This had foundations in truth, in the small world of Westside. It was not a supernatural power, but a social power.

Many were no stranger to her, like the Ambles, a Toreador brood headed by a charismatic architect and her great grand-sire, or the Purple People, Anarch gang of mixed Toreador and Malkavians. Everyone adjusted well to Camarilla life. No one really complained about drinking warmed blood out of silver glasses —  _ The metal keeps it warmer so much longer, darling! —  _ or gathering peacefully under threat of Darsh Amble, the Amble patriarch and LaCroix’s Keeper of Elysium. 

LaCroix found himself on the end of mild-mannered jokes. Ventrue were so stiff! Why couldn’t he come down to elysium and have fun? Nothing serious, Zari noted. Nothing that could get them in trouble. Everyone liked the arrangement. They even accepted the swarms of Camarilla ancillae and neonates from out of state. More Ventrue, Nosferatu, and even a Brujah. They kept largely to themselves. Anarchs were beneath them.

Every night, Darsh Amble hosted elysium somewhere different. Bowling alleys flush with drunk vessels, to nightclubs like Asylum, to stately concert halls, and even a yacht once. The novelty had yet to wear off.

LaCroix, as ever, made appearances but often vanished for hours at a time. Being the wannabe vampiric overlord of Los Angeles, apparently, included a lot of emails and conference calls.

Zari had begun to notice a pattern, though. Certain people’s presence sent LaCroix to the back rooms, but if they were with certain others, he would approach them directly and welcome them himself. Several more nights passed before Zari figured out who they were.

The Sun Chantry, equal parts coterie and research team, and all Tremere neonates sworn to Maximillian Strauss. Most dressed in shades of red and black and Zari wouldn’t believe any were older than herself. Strauss, though, more than made up for that. The tall regent dressed in sweeping red robes and red-tinted glasses, as hairless and pale as an egg.

Zari paid her gaggle of hangers-on the barest attention. One attempted to captivate her with a story of a local artist he wanted to ghoul, but she strained her ears across the art gallery to hear what one of the Sun Chantry’s apprentices whispered to one of the Invictus coterie’s Ventrue. Strauss kept to himself, but the others buzzed around like mosquitos. The elevated senses made her wince, but if she could endure a moment—

Her phone chirped, shrill and irritating.

Zari snarled as she checked it. The group laughed as the tale came to its conclusion.

A single word, sent from an unsaved number.  _ Complete. _

Relief scorched through her and Zari stood, excusing herself delicately from the commoners. 

Therese Voerman was not a hard woman to find. Always in the middle of things, a cloak of icy fear beat back the masses. Her eyebrows slid as Zari dared invade it.

“Have you some good news for me, herald?” asked Therese. The title had no respect in her mouth.

“Yes,” said Zari coolly. “The Ocean House has been cleared of ghosts, as I promised it would be.”

Therese glared at her, as though to second-guess Zari’s competence, but she kept her attention focused on the modern art piece before her. The canvas splattered with red, quilted through with silver ribbons. The more she looked, the more it seemed like a pit opened before her. Zari struggled to pull herself from a fugue.

“You have agents who dealt with the matter for you,” said Therese.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She accepted it. “Delegation is an important skill among the Camarilla, to know your place and that of those you surround yourself with. Continue on this path and you will rise high. You have earned my minor boon.”

Zari resisted the urge to sigh in relief. “Thank you, ma’am.” 

She had taken to carrying her large laptop bag with her. Rather than a laptop though, she carried a thick spiral bound notebook with black linen covers. As herald, part of her responsibility was keeping the ledger of boons. It was public knowledge, available at any elysium for any subject to read, and documented boons owed between subjects of LaCroix’s realm. On a fresh page, she laid out the minor boon and both Therese and her signed it.

Anarchs traded boons almost casually, but Zari managed to wrangle them into writing it down. Made for a safer economy. And it became another piece of the new life that they embraced.

Therese began to slowly walk down the hall. “You certainly are more interesting than I first thought you would be when Jeanette proposed you. How are you finding your time here?”

Zari followed cautiously. “Thank you, ma’am. Interesting. The Camarilla is not at all like the horror stories Anarch sires tell their childer.”

“Do you believe Ashley Swan will join us one night?”

“Perhaps. I cannot make any promises.”

“He would be a valuable asset,” continued Therese. She clasped her hands behind her. “It is all a matter of finding the right jobs for the right people. Everyone has their place. They need only find it and, on occasion, be reminded. Many have their position denied to them, by virtue of their sex or colour or clan or age, and must take it instead.”

Zari didn’t know how to answer that. They had begun to wander into the back rooms, behind the main gallery. Her mind ran in circles as they left earshot of the mostly Auspex-having population. 

Therese led them through a door and up a stairwell. They exited into a honeycombed floor of offices with glass walls. A couple of ghouled human security guards patrolled and… the Sheriff. Words hadn’t yet been discovered to describe him. Over seven feet and built like a linebacker, his clenched jaw and muteness only enhanced his terrifying visage.

Zari did her best to ignore him. Her best, in this case, wasn’t great.

“Sebastian,” called Therese.

In the privacy behind Therese before LaCroix stood, Zari let herself smirk. She took a certain delight in guessing that particular relationship accurately, puzzling out LaCroix better than he had her.

LaCroix shut a laptop abruptly and stood, face soft with relief. Spotting Zari, he only kissed Therese on each cheek in greeting, then stepped forward to do the same to her. Zari let him, noting it was as uncomfortable for him as for her.

“She’s managed to evict the ghosts of Ocean House,” said Therese pointedly.

“Has she?” asked LaCroix with disinterest. “I believe I told you to take care of that particular issue by roping the Invictus closer. Miss Herald’s youth poses as much cause for concern as for gain.”

Zari forced a stilted smile to keep her mouth shut. Ashley had urged her at their last meeting to never stop asking herself why. There was a reason for everything. Why did they talk about her like she wasn’t there? Disrespect. Underestimating her. Disregarding her personhood. Testing if she would lose her temper and lash out, like an Anarch, like what they expected from her.

“Indeed,” said Therese, “but she may still be of use beyond keeping books in order. The matter of Kent Allen Ryan?”

LaCroix didn’t like the sound of that, or appeared not to. “Do what you want with your pet Toreador, she’s not my concern.”

A snap lingered on Zari’s lips, but she held it back. Patience. Polite. She smiled winningly and LaCroix sniffed.

“May I be of service, Your Highness?” she asked.

“You may,” said Therese. “Kent Allen Ryan was a well-liked Toreador, come as a Camarilla transplant shortly before you. He did not heed his prince’s warnings and strayed into what natives call the Angels Wasteland. We have since assumed him to have met Final Death. Sidney Amble has been looking for his favourite ghoul for some time now.”

Zari knew the name, but only vaguely. A fledgling of the Amble brood, a true club rat who rarely left Santa Monica’s scene, though her sire, Sarita, and cousins doted on her. Including Darsh, her grandsire and Sarita’s lover, and one of LaCroix’s staunchest supporters. Upsetting her would be a terrible thing. And a Toreador’s ghoul could be equal parts lover, artistic muse, vessel, and servant. 

“Would you like me to find this ghoul and return it to Miss Amble?” asked Zari.

“No,” said LaCroix harshly. “It has made a nuisance of itself by UCLA, endangering the Masquerade with its foolishness.”

The ghoul needed to die, but the new prince couldn’t be seen to anger a powerful group of Toreador supporters.

“Say no more, sir,” said Zari.

“I did not intend to.” He spared Therese another look, as though wishing she had come to interrupt his business alone. “Now, if you would, do not interrupt me unless you have something worth my time. Good night to you.”

Zari followed Therese at a brisk pace. Before they had returned to the gallery, Therese said, “That was highly productive.”

“It still could be, yes,” said Zari thoughtfully. “I will attempt to deal with this matter tonight, if you would excuse me from elysium?”

Therese seemed pleased Zari would ask permission. “Of course. The prince would be appreciative to know you are so attentive to your duties.”

Zari left before she could cringe. She didn’t want anyone to think she was a lickspittle. Then again, the prince and Therese Voerman thinking that wouldn’t be the end of the world. In fact, it could be what made her night.

The finishing touches on Zari’s plan came together as she entered the UCLA campus. Unfamiliar with the landscape, she resorted to asking college students about any newcomers. She did, in fact, use the V-word, which made most of them laugh. One guy in particular pointed out a girl named Patty. She hung around this bar all the time, asking about Kent, and claiming to be some kind of vampire’s sex slave. Zari laughed with them. At least the humans didn’t suspect anything. Cleaning up that sort of Masquerade breach could take a while.

Late at night, the bar was hopping with college students looking to get drunk or laid, and all hoping to put off coursework. Zari didn’t even have to look. A pretty little white girl ran up to her, her brown hair streaked with chunky highlights.

“Hey,” she cried in a whiny voice, “I’m  _ so _ glad to see you! I just  _ knew _ you would talk to me. Vampires are, like, all drawn to me. Kent said so. He’s a pretty big player, behind the scenes, so you wouldn’t know him. You might know some guys who work for him, though.” 

Her smile verged on psychotic and Zari grimaced.

“You’re Patty, right?”

“Oh, God, how did you know? Did Kent tell you?” Her smile faltered. “Where is he?  _ Where is he _ ? I haven’t seen him in days. He said I’d never get thirsty! He said—”

Her voice had grown to a shout and the guys at the bar started to look at them funny.

Zari reached out with a hand and Presence. Patty accepted the touch, nodding fearfully as the Presence stole her emotions and left her empty and calm. “It’s okay,” said Zari soothingly. “It’s all gonna be okay. Kent sent me. You’re right. He’s  _ such _ a good guy. He’s worried about you.”

Patty’s face fell slacker and slacker. “I knew he would be,” she said dreamily.

The entrancement drained on Zari’s reserves.

“He sent me round to go pick you up,” she continued. “So, come with me. Don’t go causing any problems.”

“No problems,” she promised, half conscious.

The girl followed Zari into her car, blinking. The Presence began to waver. Zari gritted her teeth and wondered, not for the first time, how Ashley managed to keep it running all the time.

“This is a nice car,” said Patty, the start of a whine creeping back into her voice. “Kent has, like, ten of time, and his are much nicer. Convertible, too. I bet you don’t have a convertible.”

“No, I don’t,” she said testily.

Zari had to let go of the Presence to access Auspex. As a result, Patty couldn’t find it in her to shut her damn mouth. On and on about hot vampire parties and how she was gonna be a movie star and famous and rich and young forever.

As herald, Zari had not only the ledger of boons but also a census of LaCroix’s domain. Less than fifty, more than half being Toreador or Malkavian. A handful of coteries and broods with a healthy trade in boons. A disproportionate amount of boons, however, were owed to the Sun Chantry. Minor and major. No one owed Strauss himself, but everyone owed one of his apprentices.  _ Ask why.  _ The network dug deep claws and Zari had only seen LaCroix and Strauss interact twice. _ Ask why. _ LaCroix was scared of Strauss.  _ Ask why.  _ Strauss was over six hundred years old and played Tremere Primogen for a prince a third his age.  _ Ask why _ . Strauss planned on staging a coup and wanted it to roll smoothly, to pull LaCroix’s realm when it was nice and ripe and adjusted to Camarilla rule.

Zari and Patty pulled up to a building in downtown Santa Monica. The hard granite rose into an unassuming stone building, like any of the others around. The Sun Chantry. Only the sun-shaped brass knocker gave it away. Zari wasn’t stupid enough to enter a warlock’s haven. Rubio gave her enough creeps — and he lived in a Denny’s. The doorstep would have to do.

This part of downtown felt a little quieter. Good enough.

If Zari had to kill a ghoul, she rather would just drink it. Nice, peaceful, and damned tasty. This would be messy. It depended on being messy.

A hundred yards away, elysium would go on late into the night. Two of the Sun Chantry apprentices had not been in attendance, but they were the only ones unaccounted for. They would have no alibi but each other. Only Therese would know Zari had left elysium for an hour. Business would cease between the Ambles and the Tremere. Other clans would be disgusted, look at the warlocks as suspect. 

Risking being caught, Zari sent out a ping across Auspex, searching for any undead minds. If they were nearby, they would feel it. Nothing returned to her.

“What is this?” asked Patty in her full whine. “Kent doesn’t live here. And I’m  _ thirsty _ .”

“Do you know about mages?” asked Zari. Then, she thought of Jack and Ryuko. She owed them big-time for getting her Therese’s favour. “Vampire mages. Blood sorcerers.”

Patty giggled. “Yes. Kent loves the warlocks. He says they know everything.”

Hopefully not this.

Zari kept a knife on her at all times. Her big bag could hold a lot. Stake, gun, and knife included. “Kent went to another dimension to meet the warlocks, but you need to go follow him.”

Patty took the knife, uncertain. “Um. How do I go there?”

And Zari told her. Zari had never so much as met a Tremere before coming to Westside, but she knew enough of the Hermetic magic trimmings to make a good guess. She described the magic circle, drawn in fresh human blood, the symbols around the edge. And chant, too. That was important. The practitioner needed it, too, a carved pentagram over their whole chest. And then — if Patty had done it right — she needed to sit in the middle and stab her heart. Right in the middle. When she died, she would wake up with Kent.

Patty nodded attentively, absorbing every word. “I got it,” she said, determined. She gripped the knife and stepped out. Before she shut the door, she leaned back down. “I’ve met a lot of vampires who are really jealous of Kent and how badass he is, but, you’re a good one. What’s your name?”

“Zari,” she said heavily.

Patty beamed. “Thanks, Zari.”

She shut the door.

Zari pulled out her cell phone and dialed a now-familiar number. He answered instantly.

“Who this? What can I do?”

“It’s Zari, Mercurio,” she said.

“Oh.” Mercurio shifted the phone from one shoulder to another. “So, uh, hey,” he said with an uneasy laugh. “Miss Herald. How’re you? What’s kicking over there in elysium?”

“I took a break,” said Zari. Patty had cut her wrist to get the blood and was on her knees, drawing the circle. Maybe she should’ve felt guilty. Probably. “I’ve got someone about to be a body in an occult suicide outside the Sun Chantry.”

“Okay, then,” said Mercurio, as if this was a normal Friday night. “Anything I can do, miss?”

“Make sure the police discover it before the Tremere can clean it up,” said Zari. “I wasn’t here. And don’t tell the prince.”

“Roger that, miss.”

Zari took a deep breath and tore her eyes from Patty, as she determinedly followed out the fake ritual, chanting all the while. She couldn't watch it to its conclusion.

“Make sure she goes through with it,” said Zari practically. “She’s a ghoul who fucked up.” Then, she heard what she said, and to who. “I’m sorry, Mercurio.”

“Don’t worry, miss,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t take offence easy. Generally speaking, I don’t fuck up. It’s why I last. Some just don’t, and that’s the way their cookie crumbles. Anything else, miss?”

“No,” she said quietly. “No, that’s all, Mercurio. Thank you.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” he said with a smile in his voice. “Page you when it’s done.”

He waited for her to hang up. Zari swallowed heavily when she did. The sudden silence and loneliness in the car seemed to judge her. She pushed it, hard and cold, to the back of her mind. Without giving Patty another look, she drove back to the Gallery Noir, where Darsh held elysium that night.

The Keeper greeted her at the front door. He was a handsome Indian man with a hooked nose and charming eyes, dressed in a black suit and shirt. The collar opened to a touch of curly dark hair. “Apple of my eye and dark of the night,” he said smoothly. “In the mood for a bit of a hunt, then?”

“Cold blood just doesn’t scratch the itch sometimes,” she said as excuse. “Don’t let the court know the herald scooted. You know what these stiff Tower types are like.”

He smiled fondly. Darsh had been a word and faded memory to Zari, but he had embraced her like a long lost childe. Even though her own sire had been a black sheep and attempted to kill Therese Voerman. Darsh, at the time, had stepped back as his grandchilde’s gang and childer were butchered and Zari escaped. She tried, unsuccessfully, to not hold it against him. But she smiled. And he smiled.

“Your secret is safe with me,” he promised. Darsh stepped aside and let her back in, locking the door behind them. A silent ghoul took his place at the door. “I can dig. Try to give something for everyone. Some like places away from humans, others need neck milkshakes. Next week I’ll make sure to bring some tasty vessels for the herald. Got a type I should look out for?”

Zari tossed her hair and smiled. “Old, fat, alcoholics, at least three heart attacks and two divorces.”

Darsh laughed heartily and offered her his arm. She took it and let him lead her back into the gallery. “Please, remind me to have a Malkavian scrub that image out of my brain.”

“What?” she asked innocently.

“I’ll find you something good.” His dry lips brushed her cheek as he passed by her to tend to a conversation between Toreador over an art piece that seemed rowdy. “Until next time,” he said.

Zari accepted a warm glass of blood from a passing server. Even as it quenched her hunger, it lacked. No rush of feeding and pleasure, as tasty as it was. It left her with her inescapable thoughts.

Her pager beeped. She didn’t need to check it. Patty had died.

Zari put on a good face and joined the Purple People, a group of hippies in matching purple jackets, as they debated the attraction of a portrait’s subjects. The Rubenesque subjects, while not classically sexually attractive, carried a fattier blood with richer mouthfeel. They also appeared weaker, less able to fight back.

“But we all come from human stock,” cried one of them, a platinum blonde man. “The Beast is only one part of the kindred psyche.”

“You only say that, Georgie,” another said slyly, “because of your… preoccupation with Alyssa DeMass.”

“Not true,” insisted Georgie. “DeMass is a loyal ghoul, that’s it. And no one figures a large woman—”

“Fat bitch.” A couple laughed.

“Take that back!” Georgie pouted and continued to whine as the others laughed.

“The heart wants what it wants,” said Zari indifferently. “Our impulses lead us to the blood, to hunger each night and slake on living kine, but they also are born of our human desires. Blonde, brunette, men, women, fat, slender. To choose to stay to your roots, rather than feign desire for the mainstream, is a sign of inner strength and lingering human heart, don’t you agree?”

The Purple People looked at her stupidly for a minute. Then, she smiled.

“Oh, yeah, totally, Miss Herald.”

“I think it exemplifies a stronger connection to our latent sexualities, for one,” said another, latching on fast. “And, to love, as we know, is a cornerstone of human society, such as…”

Georgie looked at her like she personally set the moon in the sky every night. Zari gifted him an intimate smile before sashaying away. 

LaCroix did not need to know about that ghoul tonight. If Mercurio kept his word, LaCroix wouldn’t know until the domain did. She imagined the sweet look on his face, that insultingly polite surprise, then a shrewd reevaluating. The thing about Ventrue was that you could see their brains working.

It took two nights, but Zari was satisfactorily rewarded on the third.

Darsh greeted her with his custom overfamiliarity in the smooth jazz lounge he had rented out. “I assume they will be up to your standards, my dear,” he said with a sweet smile as he led her to a circular booth in the back. The four male models looking back at her could’ve come from a set: one blonde, one redhead, one Black and shaven, and one Asian with silky black hair. Judging by the glassy look, not a one was sober, and each sported an athletic build under simple black suits. 

Zari threw her head back with a laugh she had perfected for elysium. “Darling Darsh, you must assume me incredibly simple.”

His smile tightened a moment.

She placed a hand on his chest. “Oh, don’t worry. I will let myself be assumed.”

Zari slid into the booth, next to the redhead. She wondered what the vessels thought of the private party, who they were lounging with, what stories they had been told. Darsh was a clear master of the Toreador craft, though, and each lavished her with adortion. She scarcely needed to raise a finger. They drank themselves talkative and dopey. Zari’s fingers wormed their way along necks and wrists, stroking the red meat. As the music began, a sultry jazz quartet, she considered closing the drapes to her booth.

Then, it began.

“Maniacal wizards,” cried a woman. Sidney Amble. A girl made of toothpicks and shiny mouse brown hair. Her siblings attempted to drag her back, but she struggled mightily towards the newly arrived group. Strauss’ apprentices, sans Strauss. “How  _ dare _ you show your faces here! Animals!”

Conversation ground to a polite stop as everyone craned to get a better ear.

“You knew,” cried Sidney. “All of you  _ knew _ I put out the call to drag Patty Ians back! I had a handsome reward for her. She was our blood. You all knew her.” She turned, pleading, to another booth. “Come on, Badger, you loved Patty. Wasn’t she the sweetest?”

Zari banished the vibrating conscience in her chest.

“What is happening?” asked one of the apprentices. The others murmured amongst each other.

Sidney snarled, fangs flashing. A sweeping arm took out a server and sent a tray of drinks crashing to the ground. “You  _ butchered _ her, for one of your insane, power-crazed experiments or demonic rituals and—”

“Come now, childe, that’s enough.” Darsh stepped in, weary and steady. He stroked her hair and pulled her into his arms. His voice took a darker turn as he addressed the Tremere. “Unless Prince LaCroix says otherwise, you are welcome at elysium of the Camarilla. This disturbance will end now. The matter will drop. But, for this night, you are banished from this event.”

The Tremere gaped wildly. “What? What, pray tell, did we do? What—”

“You have disturbed the peace of elysium,” said Darsh harshly. “And that is enough for tonight.” He turned to one of his childer. “Please, Sarita, would you take your childe? Get her home and cleaned up. I’ll tend to this in family.” He advanced a few steps on the Tremere. By now, the entire lounge had silenced and could hear the soft whisper. “You have ten seconds before I call for the Sheriff. One.”

“This isn’t fair! This—”

“Two.”

“I was studying, with Mattias, I swear—”

“Three.”

“You think this’s been easy? Herd of police on our doorstep, day and night.”

“Four.”

One of them with sense held back the other. “It’s alright, sir,” he said to Darsh. “I’m sorry. We’re leaving.”

“Tremere have both wisdom and intelligence, it seems,” he said. “Though not the wisdom to understand actions do have consequences.”

The Tremere left in a hurry, the one of them still spitting curses. Sidney sobbed into her sire’s arms, even as Sarita consoled her. They, too, left quietly after a few more words with Darsh.

Slowly, ever so slowly, things returned to normal. Conversation alight with gossip, vampires did as vampires do.

Smirking, Zari reached for the drapes to pull her vessels in for a treat. A hand gripped hers, ice and iron, and stopped her. She found herself looking into the cold, impassive face of Prince LaCroix.

“Come.”

Zari stood and followed. Each step sent her stomach sinking further. LaCroix led her to the manager’s office. Startled, she took in the cracked eggshell paint, the out-of-date computer, and chairs worn flat by use. Tonight, at least, this was LaCroix’s throne room. He sat. She shut the door and stood.

“Next time,” he said, “when you are given a task by your prince, I do so expect to be informed upon its completion. I understand Toreador can tend towards the self-indulgent and dramatic. We all do have our weaknesses. But I expect to be kept in the know and not have to chase after my operative’s actions. Is that understood?”

“Absolutely, Your Highness,” said Zari. She drank in the tense respect like it was blood. “Next time?”

LaCroix indicated the chair and she took it as he steepled his fingers again. “Yes,” he said. “There will be a next time. And, quite likely, a time after that. You are… not the reckless, boorish idiot I took you for. Cunning is a trait well respected among one’s allies, though met with suspicion in one’s subjects.”

“I did not come here to just be a Camarilla subject,” said Zari coolly.

LaCroix’s lips twitched and his eyes lit with humour. “Oh, I think you did. After all, what expectations did you have that I would name you to my court? That night, Therese Voerman found me in a charitable mood and I gifted you an opportunity. You have not wasted my clemency. In fact, you have exceeded it.” He leaned back and appraised her. “You have found that you wear power well.”

Despite her thoughts of the prince, Zari felt herself swell at the compliment. “Thank you, sir.”

“You have done well,” said LaCroix. “Tell me, though. What led you to frame the Tremere?”

Zari gave herself the chance to preen. She couldn’t keep the smile from her face. “I looked over the boon ledger, deducing that Maximillian Strauss, Tremere Primogen and Regent of the Sun Chantry, owned by proxy or elsewise approximately half of the domain. Even despite their need, they are isolated and misliked. By observing over many nights, I came to the conclusion that he is likely planning to usurp you and you claim him an enemy. Driving a wedge between Drash Amble and the Tremere keeps a large chunk of influence and kindred on your side, as it is most likely that his first childe and lover, Sarita Amble, will ascend as Toreador Primogen.”

LaCroix cokced his head. “Did you not know the Tremere are not well-liked or trusted anywhere?”

She shook her head.

He chuckled, low and hoarse. “There must be some credit to those who find they must reinvent the wheel, and then do it well. All correct, except on one account. It is never wise to lay too much power in one brood. The Ambles will content themselves with elysia.”

A wild, disturbing, and thrilling thought entered Zari’s mind and surely her face.

LaCroix laughed again. “Not yet. Let us give you a few decades, first. For now, the position can lay vacant.”

“What? You—” Zari swallowed the rest of her thought.  _ You’re actually thinking of this? _

The smile did not move on LaCroix’s face. He grew utterly still and Zari realised she had overstepped her place. He would do what he wanted. She just needed to ride the wave.

“Thank you for the consideration, Your Highness,” said Zari respectfully.

“I am glad you’ve come to the right conclusion,” he said dryly. “Do not disappoint me.”

“I won’t, sir.”

LaCroix dismissed her with a nod and Zari took her exit at speed. Alone for a brief moment in the hall, she took sweet pleasure in a wide grin. She won. Would win. LaCroix knew her now, understood her, just like Therese Voerman did now. And maybe he was right. Maybe she did wear power well. She mused over the title. Toreador Primogen. She had to spend the next few decades watching, figuring out what exactly it meant — culturally, socially, practically.

Zari spent the night celebrating. The blood of her vessels was sinfully pure, lean from their good health and wealth, but rich and supple. Overpriced cologne filled her nose as she drank. Rough fingers groped her and she let them, in the privacy of their booth. They thought they were getting lucky. She let them.

The night, like all nights, came to an end. Darsh stepped on stage to dismiss the elysium. Zari took his place a moment later to introduce the prince, who thanked everyone for their attendance and wished them well. Darsh stayed late to clean up the venue and humans, while the others drifted home.

Darsh’s other childer, Gabrielle and Flynn, kept close with him, quiet words from worried faces. Zari couldn’t shake their concern from her mind as she drove. Sidney had been hurt, of course, robbed of her toy — but she would get over it. They all would, but they wouldn’t forget the alien cruelty of the Tremere. It would fester.

Zari had done a good thing, she told herself. A very good thing. It cemented peace, the prince’s rule, gained his trust and approval.  _ Ask why _ . It brought her that much closer.  _ Closer to what? _ Ashley’s voice nagged her, as if he had anything to say about this.  _ What exactly are you here for? You don’t need to do this. You have a home. _

The taunt still stung.

Zari’s knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. Emotions grew swollen, fat and heavy over her heart, behind her eyes. And she did what she had always done. She dragged it away, further back, buried deeper. Without any immediate balm to soothe the hollow ache left behind, she found herself taking a detour.

The detour took her through Mar Vista, a slick urban neighbourhood of young working professionals. Bars and restaurants stayed open late, spilling light, smell, and sound into the night. People traveled in tight packs to dissuade crime. 

Zari pulled down a residential street and parked. The house was dark inside. The lawn and home looked like they had once been taken care for, but now began to be neglected. A bright red plastic toy tricycle lay on its side in the tall grass. A dozen more toys were strewn over the lawn, an empty bucket by the driveway weary and alone.

Without a thought, without a semblance of emotion, Zari left the car and crossed the lawn. She brought armfuls of toys back to the bucket and straightened the tricycle beside it. Her fingers played over the rough plastic. Tonka trucks, a football, and ratty tennis balls. Like a dog had chewed them. The sun bleached colour from the toys. She leaned into the remnants of her son’s family life for minutes more. It was all she could do for them and even this felt like too much.

Part of her desperately wanted to knock on the door, to make them coffee or tea for the morning, make pancakes. Did Noel still like his with blueberries? He used to get excited when she made pancakes for breakfast — not scratch, but from the blue box with the rabbit. Rabbit cakes. He had only been three, then. The toddler was a man now, a husband and father, and sickly. Maybe his wife, Denise, made the pancakes now for their boys. 

Zari lingered on the front step, too long. When the front lights turned on automatically, she darted back to the car in a blink. She drove off without looking back.

The apartment building wrapped around her. It was not home. But it could be. It could be, she told herself. Narrow hallway with mailboxes. Digital security. Identical heavyset doors. On her doormat, a ceramic pot bright with flowers interrupted her thoughts.

She whipped her head back and slid her eyes into Auspex’s second sight, but saw no one. No Obfuscate, no blood magic, nothing and no one. 

Zari smiled more broadly to herself as she picked up the pot. It was terracotta, but glazed and painted most beautifully: a blue-black sky filled with yellow stars of raised paint strokes. Night-blooming flowers grew from the earth: bright yellow chocolate daisies and moonflowers with their ghostly white petals. The smell, floral and chocolatey, rich and delicate had been crafted beautifully.

In spite of her fears, Zari felt her Beast respond with a deep-seated ache for the beauty. She didn’t know how long she stood there admiring every square inch of the pot and flowers. When the fugue passed, she shivered.

Zari entered the apartment and tossed her keys in the dish absently. Evaluating the living room, she adjusted the arrangement of the plant shelf and gave the new one a starring center role. Flanked by succulents, roses, a trio of orchids, and a dozen more exotic plants, the new one still stood out.

She had never been especially vocal about her love of gardening. Most licks knew her from the zine, maybe in association with Monroe. That was business. This was passion. Zari had begun to rediscover the art of the mandrake, of feeding both vampire and human blood to plants during certain nights of the moon’s cycle, creating night-blooming and semi-sentient varietals.

Still, someone had paid her a great deal of attention.  _ Ask why. _

Zari spotted the card a moment later. It had a rich linen feel, like expensive stationary, and a careful hand had scrawled in calligraphy across its surface.

_ For the sweetest rose. _

Vampires weren’t meant for tender feelings.  _ Ask why. _ Someone — not a Toreador, likely — thought to manipulate and distract her by pretending to be a secret admirer. 

Zari stroked the card fondly, thinking of the cool hand that had moved across its surface to write these words, and she hid it in a box beside her bed with the other cards. When she shut the lid, she sealed away the distraction. They would not win over her. They would not have that of her. How dare they even try? 

She could have probed, asked around. When he wanted to be, Ashley could be very useful. Rubio was a witch in his power to know things he shouldn’t. Not Therese, but maybe Darsh. Still, so long as she didn’t open that door, she didn’t have to face how terrible the truth of that relationship would be. A lie. Manipulative. Cruel. A jerk of political intrigue. 

Despite herself, the fantasy warmed her heart. 


	21. Karma

Monroe looked at her different on the drive back. For the longest time, Charlie didn’t know if it was a good different. He didn’t look any less stressed — though, he didn’t look any  _ more _ , which, considering how the meeting went, was probably a lie.

The Garcia girls had tentatively agreed to meet with Monroe. What they had failed to mention, when they arrived at the dark and empty warehouse downtown, was that they brought what was left of El Hermandad with them. Four more Brujah, vampires once loyal to Salvador Garcia and now his childer. The girls didn’t look like a whole lot, but with the sneering, snarling guns behind them, the status quo shifted. 

At least, Charlie thought so. Monroe hadn’t said a word about the drastically uneven odds. Still didn’t. She felt pretty guilty, like she had served him up on a silver platter. 

But Monroe had smiled thinly and opened his mouth. And, then, somehow, things shifted. Bit by bit, minute by minute. Hands slipped off of guns, Brujah exchanged skeptical nods. Charlie and him never would’ve won any straight out fight, but, now, they didn’t need to.

Lorenza hadn’t liked the idea of coming to Switzerland. “What hippie peace bullshit is this?” she burst. 

“Think of it like the Barony of Angels,” said Monroe calmly. “I know, in the grand scheme of things, I’m new here. I’m only trying to honour the legacy MacNeil set down: a place to live, free and peacefully, when all the rest’s gone to shit.”

“They say the eye of the storm’s pretty calm, too,” said Miranda.

Lorenza nodded eagerly. “And you just trying to keep all the land to yourself! Why can’t any of us hold domain?”

“No domain. No domain  _ wars _ . In among everything else, we can’t afford to fight ourselves while fighting both the Sabbat and the Camarilla. We need to save our strength.”

Though he answered Lorenza, Monroe spoke to the Brujah. One made a noise of weary agreement, which made Lorenza yell at him to shut up.

“He’s a fucking Tower cape,” snapped Lorenza. “Not even an Anarch—”

“Good point,” said Monroe. “I’m not. I never have been. I accepted refuge and now I extend it to you.”

Miranda’s lip curled in disgust. “And only for the price of—”

“Live by my laws.”

Four words annihilated the kindling support the Brujah had for him. They led the laughter, longest and loudest. Vindicated, Lorenza crowed and slapped one on the back. Spanish passed back and forth.

Charlie scowled and stepped forward. Monroe’s shoes crunched on the gravel as he moved, but he let her go. “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded. “You had rules when you were all breathing. Don’t murder. Look after your kids. What is so fucking hard about that?”

The laughter went on, but Miranda only smirked. “Ask yourself, Bradley,” she said, “what do his people call him? ‘Sir’, ‘my baron’, ‘my lord’? Laws are not so simple among us.”

“Nothing,” said Charlie. “They call him captain, when they make fun of him.”

The disdain on her face only grew. Miranda pouted. “Poor Anarchs don’t even respect their Ventrue overlord.”

“I don’t give a damn about respect,” said Monroe, in the same even cautious tones. “I don’t care if I’m spat on, beat up, or left for dawn. But I cannot deny or disregard the responsibility I have for these people. It is my duty, my honour, my half of the social contract. The other half is them following common decency and laws. Care for your childer. Don’t injure other kindred. Don’t steal. The Masquerade.”

The laughter died in throats. One of the Brujah scratched the back of his neck, half ashamed. Charlie even stared at Monroe.

Slowly, Miranda began to nod.

“I was there, that night,” she said, calm and steady. “Mi dio, but I was there. Why should I obey you, Monroe, when you have butchered my sire?”

“You shouldn’t,” he said honestly. “You look a young thing, but you ruled East LA these last three years when Garcia took over Angels. You held the Sabbat back with an army of impassioned Anarchs. You know the truth of him.”

“No,” said Lorenza, stricken. “Miranda! What are you thinking?”

The sisters argued back and forth in Spanish. Behind them, almost invisible behind the larger Brujah, a tiny neonate lingered. She could have been only twelve. Valencia. Charlie caught her small eye and tried a smile. Valencia’s stiff thin mouth warbled.

Lorenza stalked off, cursing. One of the four Brujah joined her in a car and they drove off.

“I believe Lorenza wanted to say, ‘thank you’,” said Miranda wearily. “She appreciates the refuge you offer and accepts with open heart, as we all do.”

As Monroe drove them back to Blue Moon, Charlie wondered if she had fucked up. Lorenza could cause problems. All of them could. The safest choice by far would’ve been to let them fend for themselves. After all, the Sabbat was their problem. Lost Brujah were not.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered in a small voice.

Monroe glanced from the road to her, bewildered. “Pardon?”

“You said that getting the girls to Switzerland was a bad idea. I… I didn’t listen. We all just bought ourselves a whole pile of shit. We better sleep with one eye open now.” She groaned. “And we don’t need that.”

Monroe sighed and lapsed into thought. “Kindred are unceasingly cruel to each other,” he said at last. “Rivalries, schemes, Embraces, diablerie, vengeance. No one is immune, least of all you and me.”

“You saying this is your karma for diablerizing Garcia?” asked Charlie with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes.” Several miles passed before he admitted, “It is calculated, too, if you must know. Those Brujah, the former El Hermandad, are exhausted. Years of fruitless war, Embracing new soldiers, watching fledglings die. It’s hell. They wanted a way out. Miranda knew it and would do what is best for them, even if she personally disagreed. Until the Sabbat leave, they will remain peaceful.”

_ Leave _ . Leave. Charlie thought of the Sabbat that had chased them Downtown, bloody, for turf and sport. They wouldn’t just leave.  _ The Vampire Dictionary _ went into more detail, the awful bloody history of the Sabbat and the Camarilla, Sabbat and the Anarchs, the Ashirra, basically everyone. This was long from done. They would never leave.

“You did well,” said Monroe lightly. “I’m proud of you.”

Charlie picked dirt out of her nails and tried not to smile.

He pulled up next to Blue Moon and idled.

Charlie glanced to him, but didn’t say anything. Of course, he wasn’t coming in. He had work to do, a prince to infiltrate, a childe to keep, and it’s not like humans should see him at all.

“Do you wanna play D&D?” she asked weakly.

Monroe laughed, but it was bitter and not what she was hoping for. “I have things to do.”

Charlie thanked him for the ride and ducked into the club. Home was the second floor and basement. Unfortunately, she had to go in the main floor. Maybe Monroe should install a cellar entrance.

Everyone had already set up the game. Rhys polished his dice with a keen eye. Orion and Midnight almost sat on top of each other, which left Copper and Jesse to sit as far as socially acceptable. Charlie easily slid her chair between them. The tension faded. And the game begun.

They were the bulk of the basement, as always. Anyway, people kept themselves to themselves and let them have their fun. Charlie had been nervous about roleplaying in front of strangers. Even then, the domain’s licks were hardly strangers. She knew them by name, or had picked up bits about them. That Nosferatu over there, scaly and spiny, used to be a hot model — Imalia. Alice used to be a bartender upstairs before Delilah Swan took a shine to her, though Alice managed to escape before the blood had dried. Midnight and her sister Thao had been turned by rival gangs in the Valley — both gangs were dead now and the sisters were still standing. 

Jesse slung a casual arm around the back of Charlie’s chair. Charlie didn’t blush, didn’t feel butterflies bouncing in her stomach, but she could almost remember what that felt like. Sharp and warm, like Jesse’s eyes, the angle of her untamed brows, the gentle strength in her arms by the ocean. Neither had said anything. There was nothing to talk about. Things just slipped into place. Like magnets.

The game took a sidetrack from its main quest of destroying the count, but no one minded. They escaped the last town, only barely. In the next, Rhys had concocted a murder mystery that took up the last several sessions.

Orion leaned, weary, across the table. “It’s the gravedigger.”

Copper screwed his face up. “He has been at the scene the last two times, but we’re still lacking any motive. We can’t summon up a mob of pitchforks—”

“Are you having this conversation in the tavern?” asked Rhys with an amused eyebrow.

“No, no, no,” said Midnight hurriedly. “Let’s head out and talk more private-like.”

A chair was thrown across the room. A growl — a deep, menacing growl — the kind that starts in one throat and ends up dying in another. A wet spray of vitae, smelling hot and vital and  _ bloody _ , slapped her in the face.

Charlie whipped around. All the chairs were in place. She stood and found she was trembling. She felt it.  _ Smelled  _ it. No one else had. She dragged her hand down the side of her face. It came away clean. No blood.

Alice Zhao sat in the corner behind her bar with a novel, quiet and unobtrusive. Thao and Lionel Greenberg knocked heads over a boombox. Slater had gone upstairs to hunt, leaving Jeff Sullivan alone with an irritable, morose look.

Charlie turned to Rhys. “Did you feel that?”

Rhys shuffled his papers behind his screen. “There are a lot of things you don’t know about the Cobweb, kid. Those’ll only get stronger, more frequent, over the next year. Ignore them. It’s nothing. Sit.”

“Uh.” Copper’s eyes flickered between them. “What’s going on?”

“Malkavian—” started Rhys.

A chair was thrown across the room. It shattered into kindling and splinters. Jeff Sullivan had gone flying with it and groaned as he smacked into the wall. Alice fell off her stool and disappeared behind the bar. Thao and Lionel gaped, struck still.

A Nosferatu appeared suddenly. Erik Morgan. Yellowish foam drooled from a half-open maw. He dressed in black, his silhouette imperatively wrong for humans. “We don’t take well to disrespect in the Hollowmen, gutter trash,” he bellowed.

Jeff struggled to his feet. Orion shouted and leapt forward, a blink to defend his gangmate. Erik Morgan snarled, growled, a deep, low, threatening sound. And he was there first.

A hand of too-long fingers clawed around Jeff’s neck and pulled it taught. Orion staggered to a stop.

“ _ Stop _ !” shouted Charlie. She raised her hands and slowly made her way forward. “Just, stop.”

The basement came to a standstill. A dozen eyes watched carefully. With an audible  _ click _ , Thao turned off the boombox. Alice’s fingers appeared on the bar’s edge and she peered over.

“Just, let’s talk this out,” said Charlie. “No one do anything rash. What’s happening?”

Erik Morgan looked like he’d like to do anything else. “Azalea was too soft on you, opening the doors to our cathedral, letting in riff-raff — all in the spirit of generosity, of  _ sharing _ .” He spat the word like a curse. His claw tightened. “And this is how we are repaid for our kindness?”

“What happened?” asked Charlie calmly.

“If you hurt him, I  _ swear _ …” Orion couldn’t finish. He lost his breath.

Erik Morgan sneered. At least, his mouth twisted. “You’ll what?”

“Make you regret it.”

Erik Morgan gargled a laugh.

“What did Jeff do?” asked Charlie. She had never noticed how young Jeff was. He must’ve been younger than her, a mess of pimples standing stark pink on grey skin, a shock of pale red hair. He didn’t move, didn’t dare breathe — though, maybe, he couldn’t. She still felt his blood on her face.

“Nothing,” snapped Orion. “He didn’t do  _ nothing _ .”

“You are not helping here,” she said irritably. She risked her eyes off Erik Morgan and Jeff to glare at Orion. “Calm down.”

“He was invited, as a guest,” said Erik Morgan, “in our house of worship and only came to mock us, to blaspheme, and disrespect our pack and faith.”

If Orion made one more threat, Jeff would be dead. Charlie saw it in his eyes. She had never seen such pure merciless evil before. It made her want to run and hide, to the ends of the world. No one else so much as blinked. 

No Monroe. No Jack. No Zari. Why had this landed on her? It was her job, she guessed, but she hadn’t figured it would be like this.

Charlie stepped closer, still holding her hands up. Erik Morgan’s eyes narrowed. Every step echoed on the floor. No one moved. 

“That’s gotta… really suck,” she offered. She pointed down to the duct tape star on her jacket. “Monroe’s not here tonight. But I’m a peacemaker here, on his behalf. That’s why I got the cool badge. Jeff’s scared. He’s scared as fuck, aren’t you, man?”

Jeff trembled in a way that might’ve been a nod. Erik Morgan tightened his grip. The skin of Jeff’s neck parted bloodlessly under a coarse, sharp nail.

“You think I’m gonna shy away from killing some Caitiff?”

“No, I don’t,” she said. Charlie wished she could tremble like Jeff. But she had to stand her ground. “But I don’t think Azalea knows you’re here. She made Monroe a promise to keep his laws, so long as he protected you guys.” She gave Erik Morgan’s grotesque body a once over. “Looking pretty protected to me right now.”

For the smallest of moments, she thought he would let Jeff go. The mercy in the monster passed.

“Azalea might’ve,” he said. “She might not’ve. I didn’t do anything.”

Charlie flinched as Erik Morgan made a sudden movement. Jeff squawked desperately. 

“How about this, then?” asked Charlie. “Kill Jeff, you’re not making it out of here alive. No Anarchs are ever gonna take in the Hollowmen. You’ll be on your own, fed back to the Sabbat you’re running from, to the Tower — if the Reapers don’t kill you first.”

Erik Morgan took his eyes off Charlie first. He considered. The rage of his indignation had passed. Now, thinking clearly, the violent statement would make a whole lot more trouble.

He raised his hands with a smirk. Jeff fled across the room and into Orion’s hug. 

“Just so we all clear, now,” said Erik Morgan. “I came to make sure none of you rabble think you can disrespect the Hollowmen without consequences. Think I’ve made my point.”

He vanished into thin air and left by way of the elevator.

Slowly, Alice stood back up. Thao and Lionel bumped heads again, talking close and quiet, but without the boombox.

Charlie turned to Orion. “You okay?”

He glared at her, but it wasn’t for her. “I will be when those bastards are gone.”

“No,” Jeff gasped. He raised his head. “Please. Just. Let’s leave them alone. Don’t talk about them. Pretend they don’t exist.”

Orion scowled, but wound up agreeing anyways. He left with Jeff to go find Slater upstairs and head out. Charlie almost stopped them. She wanted to throw them all into a time out corner until they agreed to play nice. But this wasn’t kindergarteners with crayons. This was pride and egos and faith — all things she didn’t know much about. All she knew was that the Reapers should’ve kept their mouths shut, but they also shouldn’t have to live in fear.

Rhys closed the game for the night and packed up. Midnight broke off to go back to her sister and Lionel. Gossip would spread like peanut butter.

“We could’ve taken that gargoyle-looking motherfucker,” said Jesse fairly.

That wasn’t what Charlie wanted to hear. She sighed.

“I need a walk. Just to clear my head,” she decided.

It took some more pushing from Jesse, but Charlie managed to go out on her own. She turned up her jacket collar and hunched lower. Not a block outside Blue Moon, she felt someone step in time with her. A dreadful feeling came over her.

“Did you hear me think?” she asked Rhys. “Did you use the Cobweb to tell me to go on a walk? Or, did you just guess I’d come out and you waited?”

Rhys laughed. “You’ll drive yourself crazy asking those questions. I don’t know anymore than you.”

Sunset Junction, the meeting of Santa Monica Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard landed in the south of Silver Lake. The blocks around were surrounded by night life. Black clubs pouring music and ravers, sketchy bars, and late-night takeout places. It almost felt like daylight, the air warmer than it had been in nights.

Rhys didn’t have anything much to say, but Charlie liked his presence anyway. It made her feel more at ease. Something more than their young friendship bound them. Blood. The Cobweb. She hated how familiar it felt already.

He side-stepped a patch of vomit and a dude on the sidewalk bumped straight into him. Rhys glowered. “Enjoy those fucking scorpians in your pants,” he called.

The dude muttered to himself, confused. Only for a moment, though. Then, he screamed, thrashing against the wall. He kept thrusting his hand down his jeans, pulling it out empty and screaming louder.

“You’re a petty bastard, aren’t you?” asked Charlie wearily.

“Yep. Wanna learn? It’s easier than Dominate.” Rhys stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Malkavians aren’t really a proper clan, you know. We’re really just a Ventrue bloodline. Hence, we have both Dominate but the Cobweb warped it.”

Charlie tried to not stare. “Uh huh.” It didn’t match up anything she had heard before.  _ The Vampire Dictionary _ was very clear on the consensus of the mythos: Caine, Enoch, the Second City, Antediluvians. Maybe she had just misunderstood it.

“Really,” he went on, “Malkavians, as a clan, are comparatively recent. In ye olden days, it was just a term for vampires who went crazy.”

“Uh huh.”

They continued walking aimlessly. Charlie felt herself filter to invisible, but Rhys stayed next to her. If they were human, she probably would’ve turned into a takeout. Late night pizza or Chinese. What did vampires  _ do _ with all the time they weren’t eating?

“So, did you hear about Edwin Swent?” asked Rhys.

“You were the one who told me,” she answered. “That Gangrel cowboy archon in the Valley.”

“Oh yeah, guess I did. Well, he belongs to a Shadow Justicar.”

The way he said it made Charlie think she should know that, like it was incredibly important and should instill fear. She felt afraid anyway. But she hadn’t heard of a Shadow Justicar.

“That’s not good,” she said. “Even worse than it was before.”

“And, I know you don’t know things, but—”

“I know enough.”

Rhys’s smile quirked into a smirk, only briefly. Charlie stopped walking. It took him a moment, but he turned back with a picture of pure innocence on his face.

“What?” he asked.

“Are you on the level?” she asked.

“Of course,” he insisted. “Also, you need to know, licks are gonna talk. It’s about the only good thing licks do. And they’re gonna talk about Monroe and how he appointed a _ sheriff _ . Neither of the actual-princes has even appointed reeves or cupbearers yet.”

Charlie forced herself visible, only to give Rhys a look of mild scepticism.

“What do you mean by that?” he snapped. His eyes flashed. “God help me, she doesn’t even know what reeves and cupbearers are. What has your sire been teaching you, neonate?”

“Yes, what has my sire been teaching me?” Charlie smiled. “You’re a petty bastard who’s absolutely full of shit. When did it start?”

The anger bled from Rhys’s face. He shuffled. “Since ‘Malkavians are a Ventrue bloodline’.”

Charlie walked alongside him again. “Got a good reason?”

“ ‘Don’t pretend to know more than you do, because there’s a good chance the person you’re trying to impress knows shit all’.”

She considered. “That’s a pretty good one.”

“I was expecting you to go all, like, ‘Well, it’s too soon to be appointing cupbearers’.”

Charlie was liking Rhys’ bullshit Aesop’s Fables. They kept her on her toes, at least. Nothing came out of his mouth straight. Even the air he breathed came out crooked. But there was never malice to it, only a hope that she would see it. And, more often than not, she did. He wasn’t exactly subtle about it.

“I’m not Monroe’s sheriff, by the way,” she added.

Rhys flicked the star on her jacket. “Maybe don’t wear a sheriff’s badge, then. Especially one that looks like a little kid made it.”

She glanced to him, hurt. “ _ I _ made it.”

“Oh. It looks great. It—”

“Shut up.”

Rhys shrugged, put out, and faded from view. 

Charlie found Jesse already sitting in the parking lot. Jesse stood up, trying to adjust the fall of her rumpled t-shirt. Charlie couldn’t help but smile. Her aura gave away her anxiety, but also her hunger.

“Before we head out, do you wanna get a drink?” asked Charlie.

Jesse grimaced at how it sounded. Despite her years as a vampire, the pain on her face was clear. “There won’t be much any people in Griffith Park. I think I’ll be okay.”

Charlie stuck her hands in her pockets, hyper-aware of the frosty distance between them. “I figure, once humans become evil, they sorta have it coming, you know? We get to be…” She sought for the right word and remembered the Hollowmen again. “Infernal karma.”

Jesse risked a smile. “What’d they do?”

“Nothing good.”

Jesse agreed to come along and Charlie told the story of William E Smith, convicted of raping a fourteen-year-old at a local park just down the road. Decades ago. He never even served time, got to live a peaceful life. Gradually, Jesse warmed to the idea.

“I try not to feed off him too often,” Charlie explained. “Asked Monroe before. Once a week, at most. He’s my favourite and my first, but I haven’t been knocking in weeks.”

“What a special dinner,” she said sarcastically. Jesse watched out the window, her fingers tying into knots.

“He has it coming.”

She nodded. “Oh, I agree. Not arguing that. Just, I don’t like… biting.”

Charlie felt a wave of shame crash over her and take her away. Shit. She hadn’t thought of that, that Jesse had watched a vampire eat her brother. Of course Jesse would rather drink from a glass. Even Charlie had to admit, though, that sinking fangs into soft flesh was a special sort of ecstasy.

“Maybe we can tap him like a maple tree,” she said weakly.

Jesse smiled, small and soft and private.

The house of William E Smith looked too nice and normal. More like the house coming-of-age movies got filmed in. A pretty brown house trimmed in white with neat hedges and a clean mid-ranged car in the drive, surrounded by houses of the same breed. Not even a weed in the lawn.

Charlie marched right up to the front door and rang the bell. “Knock, knock, Will,” she called. At the look Jesse gave, she added to her, “He’s pretty pitiful.”

William opened the door, a small trembling wreck of a man — or a mouse, maybe. He had the ears, and hair growing out of them, too. His undershirt was stained with sweat and food. He smelled sour and rotten and delicious. Fear. The way fresh sweat mingled with unwashed man. He recognised Charlie and recoiled as she invited herself into the house. It was just as much a mess as the man. Doilies over empty shelves and cabinets, home to little more than dust and portraits of saints on the walls. Stale potpourri and couches worn flat from too many years of use. Charlie dropped herself into one. A plume of dust came up.

“I still can’t believe that mess earlier in Blue,” she said to Jesse, who lingered in the hall. “Was Erik Morgan just following the Reapers, invisible, until one fucked up?”

Jesse gave William an uneasy look.

“I think I went a bit heavy on the Dominate the first few times. Maybe even Dementation,” she mused, thinking of Rhys.

William returned to his sofa and the TV, audio barely above mute, played on the late night news. He muttered to himself, nonsensical. 

Jesse noticed, for the first time, the row of pictures on the mantle. They were school pictures, of little girls, no older than fourteen. The girls and Bella couldn’t have been more different — older, blonde braids, blue eyes — but Charlie couldn’t help but think of her sister. The hollowness ached, but it didn’t gouge anymore. 

“He got a type, don’t he?” Jesse whispered in horror.

Charlie didn’t need to answer. Jesse would come to her own conclusion, the same one Charlie did. That feeding was a necessary evil but, maybe, also, it was karma. 

As Jesse picked up the oldest picture, which was in black and white, William’s mutterings strengthened.

Jesse frowned as she listened. “Does… Does he think you’re actually an angel?”

“Avenging angel,” she clarified. “Ariel, protector of children.”

“Really?” asked Jesse, interested. She peered down at William. “That true? You fuck up bad enough to have God send out some prime grade vengeance?”

He didn’t speak, but he nodded. 

“What’d you do?” she dared. “Go by that school and take some poor middle school girl, drag her out to the park, and push her into the sand? That why you still live so close? No one bothered to sentence you the first time, figured you could again?”

William kept nodding, shaking. His eyes grew wet.

Charlie felt nothing but disgust for his fear. “Imagine. I bet I’ve fed on a dozen, so far, and they all manage to confess to doing more than they ever got caught for.”

Jesse needed no more provocation. Like a viper, she struck. As she fed, the shadows deepened and glittered like stars and whispered like dry leaves. William slumped, semi-conscious. Satisfied, she settled back beside Charlie. Her guarded eyes turned soft and lost. Charlie leaned into her.

Jesse bit her lip. “I… I’ve spent the last ten years feeding off other vampires. Now and then, of course, I’d lose it. Since there was no good way to eat people, I figured I never would. I mean. What I’m trying to say—”

“You’re welcome.” Charlie smiled.

Jesse’s smile was stilted. “Thanks.”

“Don’t make me twist your arm for it.”

Charlie turned the smile into a kiss. It was meant to be brief, but Jesse wasn’t having any of that. She lost herself in the feeling, the soft strength of her lips, the arms of flesh and darkness, the lingering taste of blood. Did she miss the memo? Wasn’t there supposed to be hand-holding and bashful batting eyelashes first? Charlie didn’t mind. She liked the way Jesse felt in her arms, the fiery urgency. 

William moaned in fear.

Charlie dragged herself away, only to see the utter blackness of the living room. They could’ve been floating in the void of space, floating in the most peculiar way. William clasped his hands over his spotted head, whimpering.

“You don’t get to be afraid,” snapped Jesse. “You fucking lost that right.”

The darkness became less absolute, more smoke-like, and the living room filtered into distant view. Jesse picked up the oldest photo from the mantle and smashed it on the ground. Then, the next one. And the next one. Glass glittered with rainbows, the frozen smiles of his victims preserved like insects in amber.

“Can’t you hear them?” asked Charlie in a hushed whisper. “They’re coming.”

Jesse looked to Charlie with concern, but William dissolved into sobs.

It came easier than she thought it would. Charlie realised, then, the second set of senses that layered over all the others. Rather than ignoring the Cobweb, she embraced it. She showed it. She brought William back with it.

The girls screamed. Their spirits, trapped in the glass, freed, attacked as malformed innocence — rabbits, lambs, kittens — rabid, murderous, but harmless. They screamed, clawing. At least one had been here. Sparkly fuschia nails, desperate. Chipped nail polish. The nails grew shingled armor like scorpions, layers of shark-toothed mouths, and burrowed through him.

“You can feel them,” said Charlie tonelessly, “digging through. Hungry.  _ Desperate _ .”

The heavy parasitic, predatory energy in the air took form. A thousand memories, each a smoke bubble of impossible creatures. Flying spiders. Long taloned wolves.

William’s blood-curdling scream silenced sharply. A lash of darkness wound around his neck.

“You alright?” asked Jesse, brow drawn. “Is this… normal?”

Charlie found herself back in her physical body — uncomfortable, too much. Her skin was the wrong size. Her tongue sat uncomfy in her mouth. She felt the crawl of ants along her skin. “Yeah. Just. Rhys’ used this before, Dementation, it’s a Malkavian power. Dominate, but Cobweb. Wanted… to try it.”

Charlie could feel every warble on Jesse’s hand as she tipped Charlie’s face to look back up at her. She smiled weakly.

“Finish him off,” said Jesse softly. “You look like shit.”

Charlie didn’t have the energy left to complain. Jesse was right. Besides, there were more Williams where he came from. And one was one too many. At least that middle school would be safe, now.

Charlie didn’t realise how hungry she was until Jesse said. William cried out when she bit, but fell limp as she fed. His blood was greasy, heavy with fear and regret, and desperately sweet. She drank deep and long, guiltlessly, until satisfaction hit and the vein drew dry and chewy. The Beast. The Cobweb. Silence. Blissful silence. She had never felt more like herself.

Charlie shoved William’s heavy corpse. He rolled to the floor. The blackness abated into the dirty, overly Christian living room.

Jesse kissed her again, brief, to lick the lingering blood from her lips. Jesse’s lips turned into a smile against hers.

“Let’s get to Griffith Park,” said Charlie, pushing her away playfully. “The night’s not getting any younger.”

Jesse grumbled reluctantly, and held her stony silence all the way to the park. It wasn’t like it was a long drive, though. Charlie’s nights comprised of the same couple dozen square miles. No wonder licks were snapping fangs. Small miracle Jeff had only been the first one to get caught with his pants down.

Griffith Park had officially closed hours ago, but it didn’t stop many people. Through high school, she knew kids to come here to get drunk or stoned. College kids partied in the ruins of the Old LA Zoo, especially on Halloween. Charlie’s main knowledge of the park came from camping and hiking. Sunny weekends and cheap tents. She had been camping when Rhys had attacked her.

Charlie led Jesse up a familiar trail. As undead, their muscles didn’t burn or exert or complain as the climb steepened.

“What’s the point?” Jesse complained, and not for the first time. “Just, walking up stairs to get to the top and come right back down. We can’t even fly off.”

“Comune with nature. Marvel at the vastness of the city and the people in it. Contemplate the universe. Have fun.”

Charlie heard Jesse smirk. “ ‘Commune with nature’?”

“Yeah,” she said defensively. “Nature’s dope as fuck.”

“I’m not making fun of your woo-woo.” For a moment, she lost her trademarked confidence. “I think it’s cute,” she said, flustered. “Like, cool. Not trying to shame you or nothing.”

Charlie smiled, but kept the sentiment to herself. Her feet found their places on the familiar steps. Jesse was right. They really were just steps. Animals avoided the stench of vampires. Charlie’s red night vision caught a fearful squirrel, but he left before she could explain things.

“I used to come here with my friends,” she said. She sighed. “Haven’t in a long time, even before.”

“What happened?” asked Jesse, like she couldn’t be bothered.

“My mom died in my first year of college,” said Charlie. “It shook me up pretty bad. Bella became my responsibility, so, I dropped out and started working. It took over my life, trying to raise the kid and pay the mortgage. I didn’t see my friends for weeks or months. When I did, I was mean.”

The wind rustled through the leaves, peaceful-like. Charlie didn’t feel the breeze on her skin and wondered if it was something else. Maybe it was Rita. Rita and Megan and Carlos. And Dustin. Always Dustin. She had chased them away because she hadn’t had the chance to grieve. She had only been nineteen. Now, a grizzled twenty-year-old vampire, the weight of the grief had lessened.

“I’m sorry,” said Jesse quietly. “I — I really admire you for giving up Bella, like you did. I don’t think I’d be able to.”

“Thanks,” she said, but it was hollow.

“I know what it’s like to lose friends,” continued Jesse. “Sometimes, I’d run into other hunters — humans, who’d found out. We’d trade info, sometimes phone numbers, and go our separate ways. I was always too scared to phone them, though. What if the line was dead? Cesare was my best friend.” A rattling sigh ran through her chest. “A real charmer. He had this way of seeing who you were with just a handshake. He believed evil was in the choices we make, rather than what others did to us. And I had made the right one. I was always welcome in the church.”

“Church?” Charlie turned back to give a smile. “You found a priest who moonlights as a hunter?” She realised as soon as she spoke and her heart sunk.

“He was part of the Society of Saint Leopold,” Jesse explained. “Hunters sworn to the Vatican. I had come to visit him here in LA when Garcia took me.”

Charlie could still hear Monroe. The very first time she had ever been in Blue Moon, the first time she had met Ashley. Him and Monroe had made a deal, the night after a dust up in Beverly Glen.

_ You know where the Society is in LA? _

_ Yes, of course. Gabriel’s mission. _

_ They hit me. You would be doing me a favour if you took care of them… A major boon. _

“I didn’t mean to send the God squad after you,” said Jesse meekly. “I panicked. I was under Garcia’s blood—”

“Water under the bridge,” said Charlie distantly.

Jesse swallowed heavy and they kept walking.

“First thing I did, I asked Monroe who killed them,” she said. “He wouldn’t tell me. Shit, man, even after LAX, I don’t believe Monroe could’ve taken out the entire chapter. Thirteen?”

He didn’t. Ashley did. And he had kept them. Ghouled them, blooded them like Garica had enslaved Jesse’s will.

Charlie almost told her. Almost. They could go rescue the Society hunters, Jesse’s friends. Free them from Ashley’s dastardly influence and… and what? And let Silver Lake fall apart, Ashley blame Monroe for Charlie’s betrayal, let hunters keep merrily killing across LA. Rhys. Midnight. Orion. Jeff.

Charlie didn’t say anything but Jesse heard it anyways.

“You know,” she said in a broken whisper. She stopped walking. “You fucking know.”

“Jess—”

“Tell me.”

“Jesse.”

Even with her night vision, the shadows darkened. The darkness had felt comforting before, warm and gentle and protective. Now, it was something very different. An enemy that surrounded her with ice and smoke as strong as iron.

“ _ Tell me _ ,” she screamed.

The command was a hammer on her brain, but Charlie couldn’t obey. Tell what? Say what? The Dominate trembled through her mind. Blind, she felt her way though the familiar path. 

“Tell me or, I swear to God, I will tear it out of you.”

Charlie couldn’t process the frantic hate in Jesse’s voice. It was just talk. She had a right to be mad. Like when Charlie made mean comments about Megan’s new haircut. Biting back because the world bit too hard. Didn’t mean anything.

“Why won’t you help me, you evil bitch? I’ll find out and I’ll come back for you, stake you and watch dawn crawl up your legs.”

The fear drew Charlie’s fangs downwards and she whimpered.

“I wasn’t gonna say anything,” said Jesse harshly after her, “but those girls you so desperately wanted to keep alive, they saw me. When their daddy kept me in a cage and tortured me, trying to get me to talk, they saw. Neither of them said a damn thing. They didn’t think nothing of it. They were — I — It—”

Jesse had stopped following. As Charlie broke out of the darkness, she looked back, heart in her throat. Jesse leaned against a tree, a clawed hand scrabbling at her chest as she breathed rapidly, wheezing.

Charlie came back.

“It’s okay, Jess. Just breathe, it’s alright. You’re safe. I’m here.”

There was no anger or accusations as Jesse fell into her arms. Charlie kissed her hair and the darkness slunk smaller, more intimate, and Jesse pulled her closer and attempted to draw breath. It poured out of her in a pining rasp, everything that people had done to her, everything the world had inflicted, the evils, the injustice, the broken pain inherent in their lives no one seemed to recognise. Everything. Everything. And, God help her, she drank it down. She drank it like blood, like it was the only thing sustaining her. Charlie drank until her heart ached, overfilling, and it cascaded down her dead ribcage.


	22. Instructions for Dancing

Carefully, Monroe cut another piece of electrical tape. It was the thickest he could find. Slick black vinyl, not that the colour mattered much. He consulted his notes. On the bass switch of the recording console, he adjusted the last piece.

Orion still lingered, mute, in the doorway as he worked. Even given an explicit offer, he didn’t sit. Monroe had been under the impression that Beverly Hills had gone quite well. A combined force of the Hollowmen, Reapers, and La Hermandad had cleared out a pair of raider gangs in Beverly. To the Anarchs, it was common gang warfare. To Abrams, it gave him breathing room. To the newly named La Hermandad, it gave them great distance from Downtown and the Sabbat, but put them at the frontline against the Westside Prince as well as the frou-frou Toreador in Hollywood. They felt useful. Hopefully, it would keep them loyal and out of Monroe’s hair.

To the Reapers, it had been an insult to be in shooting range of the Hollowmen. 

Finished with the recording console, Monroe turned his chair and inspected Orion dispassionately. A young Brujah, desperate — like most Brujah — to do the best, but never knowing what it was. Reared in the nightmarish street culture of Anarchs, yet his priority was not power or ego but his people. The Brujah was younger than he first appeared, which would be young by any standards. A blue-black stubble carved out his handsome cheeks. Under the ragged, baggy clothes and baseball cap, he was just a kid. Ten years undead, maybe twice that mortal.

“The Reapers used to be twelve,” said Orion heavily. “We had a lot of casualties coming out of the Valley. Now, only five, we… My sire, Yaz, he… Well.” He hung his head and coughed. “Licks ain’t democratic. Never will be. Not even monarchistic. But, Yaz was our leader and now it’s me.”

“Someone had to stand up,” said Monroe mildly. “There are many gangs, including Lorenza Garcia’s own Tempests, who never made it out of the Valley to start with. Never forget. The Reapers are still around because of you.”

Orion tucked a stray strand of black hair behind his ear. He shrugged off the compliment. “I came here, really, to say sorry.”

Monroe’s eyebrow inched higher. “What for?”

“I didn’t trust you, when we headed out. You said the Hollowmen’d never do a thing if you were on the scene. Honestly, I thought you were getting rid of us.”

Kindred talk. Monroe knew what they said. He approved of how Charlie had handled things between Erik Morgan and Jeff Sullivan, though it elicited new rumours. A sheriff. A keeper of elysium. Ventrue meant Camarilla to begin with. And Monroe had never been Anarch. The Garcias hadn’t been enough to dispel anything. Little did they know, though.

Jan lived in the corner of Monroe’s mind, whispering.  _ Prince of Los Angeles. _ The missed opportunity of New York filled him with bile. But that was years ago, Jan’s schemes years ahead. The sword had been secreted away, but Monroe couldn’t shake the feeling it hung over his neck.

“You haven’t done anything to merit me getting rid of you,” said Monroe. “I admire how you’ve handled the responsibility of your gang.”

Orion’s smile flattened. “Didn’t think you’d be there with us. I think I misjudged you.”

“Dominate can be useful in a fight.” There was no need to add how it tired him, how it strained the limits of his abilities. His presence in a fight, side by side, was what he needed to accomplish.

Orion nodded. “It’s just — It’s good to know that there’s someone above you that you can count on, you know?”

“I know,” he said softly.

_ Prince of Los Angeles. Though, now, I am thinking you may prefer Prince of San Francisco _ .

Orion left just as Monroe’s pager buzzed with a code number. Ritter had arrived with Hawthorne. Ritter was so useful Monroe was almost loathe to have him chaperone. He reconsidered making contact again with Dawson. His former head of security, like everyone else, thought Monroe dead. Only Obfuscate and his own late hours let him operate in Blue Moon freely. Dawson had only been ghouled a few years. Those few years could just be a bad dream. He could return to a human life, never knowing.

But Ritter was useful. Dawson would be convenient as both bodyguard and guide for Hawthorne.

Hawthorne arrived momentarily. She held Ritter’s elbow for guidance and Monroe knew it was a bad night. Her fingers searched for the back of the offered chair and she sat. Ritter excused himself from the room, though he stayed close.

“Sir,” said Hawthorne with a distant, cold respect. “Would you like me to reiterate the legacy and achievements of Democritus?” 

“I’ve had more than enough of the line’s history,” he said. “Instead, I thought you may have a night off to enjoy yourself.”

“How generous of you, sir,” she said dryly. “I suspect you have prepared a symphony. Perhaps, even, your ninth.”

Monroe clicked in place the tape that had been recorded earlier in the day. “It’s Chopshop,” he said.

“Nothing’s been done to it,” she determined after a minute’s listen. Her voice narrowed in suspicion. “It’s raw.”

Monroe licked his lips. He did not know where the lines were, though felt already he treaded too close. A night of freedom already was more than she expected. That alone was a step in the right direction. He was an idiot. He extended a hand to her, moments above hers. She recognised it with neither withering derision nor confusion.

“If I may have your hand,” he asked.

Her fingers brushed his and he stood, sliding her rolling chair to the deck. He placed her hand on the console. Her fingers traced the familiar lines of the board, stuttering over the tape.

“I noticed the system of markers on your cosmetics,” he said. “These columns are the audio tracks, numbered by dots. At the fifth, there is a line, then at ten, two lines.”

“I can tell,” said Hawthorne. The sentence was too short to discern anything more, but he thought it might have been less cool.

Monroe pushed on. “I don’t know how if you know Braille, but this  _ EQL _ is for the line of equilizars. The aux controls begin here.” He glanced at her face again but she might’ve been made of stone. He slunk back into his chair. “I know you know the order of the gain, bass, EQ. Three years is long enough to make it habit. I just — I —” The stutter even made  _ him _ cringe. “I just wanted you to have a point of reference. And to get you out of that damned house.”

Hawthorne’s fingers hovered where he had left them. They glided over the imperfect Braille he had attempted.

The song cut to an abrupt end and a lag silence in the recording proved too much to bear. Monroe stood to leave.

“I’ve been learning,” she said hurriedly. “Braille, I mean. I’ve been learning it. Auspex has helped, in terms of finger sensitivity, but it’s unlike any language I’ve tried before.”

Slowly, he sat again next to her. She hadn’t raised her head from the console.

“It’s called CVI,” she said, almost to herself. “Cortical Visual Impairment. Typically, it’s a stroke or some traumatic brain damage. Like a bullet. My brain struggles to process what my eyes are seeing. My eyes work just fine and, sometimes, I can almost see.” She smirked. “That first visit, they rushed me a pair of glasses, as though that could fix all my problems.”

“Can it?” asked Monroe.

“No. It might turn colours into blurred shapes, but, well. I won’t be driving you anywhere.” She raised her face and smiled at him. “Most of the time, it’s patchy light. Sometimes, the light hurts. Most of the time, it’s nothing. Depends what flavour my brain feels like at the moment.”

Monroe longed to apologize, but it wouldn’t come from a place she wanted. “What can I do?” he asked instead.

A small breath left her parted lips. Unanswered, his words hung until she found a smirk again. “I’d love Ritter full-time.”

He chuckled. “That is not going to happen. I need Ritter for other things.”

“You gave him to me so Pieterzoon knows what a good little Ventrue sire you’re being,” she said smartly. Her fingers slid in familiar patterns over the console, fiddling dials until the ugly edges of Chopshop’s guitarist filed smooth.

“Partly. Also, every minute he is with you is a minute he is not with my operations.”

“Am I not your operations?” There was a snide humour in the question, a bite more teasing than snap. Monroe forgot how he missed it.

He smiled and wished she could see it. “You could be, if you want.”

Hawthorne knew. Two centuries serving the clan, his sire and grandsire. Madame Jenine Portier of Paris would’ve had two childer before Monroe’s sire, each of them taking predestined positions in her own works. Hawthorne had been a precious gift when, disgraced, Alastair Fowler had turned to the New World. She had watched him Embrace all his childer, relying on Monroe the way princes rely on seneschals, the way kindred rely on their ghouls.

She didn’t say no.

Monroe almost told her about Jan’s plans, the sword, the scepter promised, the crown of Los Angeles. Then, he remembered why she had come to him: to be part of the Camarilla. He could not bear her excitement. It would ruin him, rob him of his suspicion and encroaching fear. He needed to stay sensible.

“First, regardless,” he continued, “if you want to complete the agoge, there is a measure of tour. Traditionally, you would spend months with each distinguished Ventrue of a city after learning the bare bones from myself.”

Hawthorne scowled at the console and slid the bass of the entire track. Sarcastic sad trombone.

“Being a Ventrue is suffering tradition.” He sighed. “Speaking of the clan, I’ll need to meet with Fortier tonight.”

Hawthorne snorted. “Has Mickey Mouse not chosen a side?”

“Not yet.” Monroe stood, aching at the thought of leaving so soon, but then changed his mind and sat again. “Fortier is old, which means he’s clever. All that kept him with the Anarchs is his own twisted pride and honour code.”

“You’re hoping he’ll relate to you?”

“You tell me,” he said with a wry smile. “Why am I meeting with him?”

Hawthorne sat back and dialed down the volume to a low murmur. “To make common cause,” she decided. “He had decades to rejoin the Camarilla, but he’s stayed a loner from the Anarchs. If he’s proud, he won’t show his face Downtown. So. You  _ are _ hoping he’ll relate to you, want to stay independent.” She cast him a friendly sigh. “You could’ve just said yes.”

“Of course. But, now, you know.”

He had his hand on the door when she called after him, “Are you teaching me to second guess everything?”

“Always,” he said.

With Obfuscate, Monroe left carefully. Blue Moon felt untouchable to him, on the other side of impenetrable glass. He took care to stay out of people’s way, almost snarling against the hunger at the alien Discipline. Prime hour for humans, they hollered and jostled over the rhythm of the band. Alcohol spilled out of glasses and, everywhere, the scent of blood peppered with the lure of orphan.

Monroe had almost made it to the front door when he spotted Ashley. Most of his domain tended to hunt here, which Monroe only encouraged, but Ashley didn’t hunt. Not publicly, at least. He traded intimate words with a young girl, her eyes and face slack. It was a look Monroe knew well, inflicted by an amateur Domitor. Ashley pushed something into her hand and she toddled off uneasily to the restrooms.

Ashley had dealt drugs through the Sunset Junction and even Blue Moon long before Monroe had come to LA. Something about the exchange raised his suspicions, though. No entourage, no childer, no human associates.

Surely feeling the eyes on him, Ashley scanned the crowd and looked directly at Monroe. Toreador’s innate Auspex trumped his pitiful attempts at Obfuscate. Ashley raised an eyebrow and Monroe beckoned for him to join him in the elevator.

“Something to say, blue blood?”

Monroe hit the button for his office. “What are you doing?”

“So coarse.” He gave a shiver. “Running a circulatory.”

Monroe’s eyes swept him. “Are you selling the blood out of a truck?”

“Veins, you know that.”

The elevator opened. Ritter waited for him and leapt to his feet with old instinct. Ashley beamed.

“Don’t encourage him,” said Monroe. “Please, leave us.”

Ritter didn’t make it more than two steps before Ashley said, “Stay.”

Conflicted, Ritter’s eyes searched for direction, sworn to obey Monroe by Pieterzooon but unwilling to disobey another kindred. Along with amusement, Ashley’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. 

“Get out, Anton,” said Monroe before Ashley could see anything.

Ritter left in a hurry.

“You’re being awfully cagey about this,” said Monroe, just as Ashley raised an accusing finger at Ritter. “Whatever business you’re conducting here, I need to know about it.”

Ashley didn’t like dropping the matter of Ritter, so clearly alien to Anarch sensibilities, but he did. “That Setite has proven what we all already knew: vampires like to get fucked up and strung out just as much as humans, maybe more.”

“You’re selling blood through junkies,” said Monroe.

Unsavoury, but understandable, even efficient.

He hesitated. “I would think a Ventrue would understand maximizing a product’s usage and revenue. Through a circulatory, I get to sell the drug twice in addition to the blood.”

“What else? There’s something else.”

Ashley laughed, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “Do you want a list of lick customers?”

Monroe held his eye, cool. “I want to know what you’re not saying. I will figure it out, but I would prefer honesty.”

“And I would prefer you got that stick out of your ass.”

“Ashley.”

He bared his fangs. “Fine.” He raised three fingers. “Fire. Sun. Decapitation. OD isn’t one of the sanctified ways of meeting Final Death. It’s just… one hell of a high.”

“You’re using Dominate to force humans to overdose, selling their life and blood.”

Ashley smiled in that way he surely knew unnerved Monroe. “Want a sample?”

Monroe felt shamed that his first concern was Ashley’s strength in Dominate. The hardest commands to give involved danger to the self. Any junkie would know they would overdose. A matter of weeks had brought Ashley to a power that young Ventrue would chase for decades. Practice? Additional blood, given by another Ventrue? Fortier? Westside or Valley?

Giving Ashley the Discipline had been a mistake. All Monroe had to leash him was the bond now.

“Do you fantasize about killing me, Monroe?” he asked with a smug smile.

“Yes.”

Ashley laughed.

Monroe sighed. His first concern should’ve been the careless murder and cruel treatment of humans in his establishment — in his care, if he wanted to be so explicit. But it wasn’t. The night Abrams finally rid him of Ashley could not come soon enough. Ashley best understood the language of money and mutual benefit, rather than moral outrage. Perhaps, Monroe did, too. It wasn’t a feeling he enjoyed.

“I don’t care what you do on your own time in Hollywood,” he said, “but this is my domain. And this is how it will go. Whatever vessels you wish to sell, you will import yourself. Typical humans in Blue Moon are untouchable. You will clean up their corpses yourself. And I get a cut.”

“Sure,” said Ashley, disbelieving. “I’ll just get my boon knife. How do you want to be splitting a minor from my customer?”

“I get a cut of the sale, same as before. Thirty-percent. And I know the details of each boon owed to you. Who owes it, the size, for what,  _ and _ when you call it in.”

Ashley iced and stiffened. “Steep terms. Do I not get any privacy once I’ve tied myself to you?”

“Only in things that don’t concern me or my business.” When Ashley rolled his eyes, he continued, “Have I asked about your rivalry with Abrams? Have I interfered or set down laws? I don’t ask about your childer, your ghouls, or how you accomplish what you do.”

Ashley nodded. “Fine. I’ll clean up my messes, but you better remember: no taxation without representation.”

Monroe groaned. “You can’t still be upset about Hollywood.”

“Every breath that bastard breathes in the city is an insult.”

The venom surprised him. As far as Monroe could tell, Abrams had done little and less than complain. He concerned himself with mortal affairs, rather than kindred. He didn’t limit Ashley’s illicit activities, discipline any kindred living in his Hollywood, or even host a salon.

It could only be Velvet Velour. Like Zari, she had left Ashley to find a new sponsor to keep her safe in Anarch turmoil. She had found Abrams. Monroe assumed Ashley’s hatred to spawn from his own wounded ego of past business, but it was deeper than that. Mere ego would’ve had him butcher Abrams years ago. So long as Miss Velour fancied Abrams’ company, Ashley let her have her happiness. 

It was a side Monroe did not like to think Ashley had. A cruel murderous Ashley, one who lived for the decadence and moral decay of Hollywood nightlife, who chased power and nursed his ruthless pride. Monroe knew that Ashley well. He was as common as Toreadors came. To think him capable of selfless affection threw a wrench into things.

“When the Camarilla have been chased out of the city,” said Monroe heavily, “we can deal with Abrams.”

“Why would you help me with that?” he demanded, eyes narrowed. “You would make an enemy of your own people.”

“They are my people, but some are more mine than others.”

Ashley apparently saw something in Monroe, too, something he didn’t like the looks of anymore than Monroe liked him.

“I’ll take it again,” said Ashley softly. “If you want me to.”

It had been four weeks. The bond would decay in a matter of days. The submission spoke to Monroe’s Beast and it crowed again for a bondslave.

“Do you want it?” he asked instead.

Ashley didn’t give it a moment’s thought. He only nodded. Stunned, Monroe was never one to turn down an opportunity. Why would Ashley submit to a bond? Did he think he could fight it? With his Generation, he could be nearly anything. So lost in his thoughts, Monroe didn’t react fast enough. Ashley struck in a blur, though, thankfully, only bit his wrist. His fangs sunk deep. The sharp agonizing pleasure robbed Monroe blind — of all thoughts, the feeling in his limbs, the hunger of the Beast. It couldn’t last long enough.

Ashley pulled back and Monroe blinked back to the physical world. Ashley supported him against a wall, his face flush with vitae and the touch of a strong bond. The naked adoration sickened Monroe.

Arrogance. It was arrogance. Ashley thought he could fight a bond and so used it to gain Monroe’s trust. What a reckless idiot. A second drink in one month, even if the first would fade in a few nights. If Monroe had been anybody else, he would’ve used the opportunity for a third drink. He still could. 

He wouldn’t. But he could.

“Next time,” said Monroe in a thin voice. “Next time, I will have you drink from a sippy cup.”

Ashley’s lazy smile only invoked his ire. “Whatever you say.”

“Get off me.” Monroe shoved him and struggled to remember what they had talked about. “Deal with your circulatory system adequately. Don’t begin a civil war with Abrams before we’ve—”

“You’ve never heard of ‘post nut clarity’, have you?”

Monroe scowled and stabbed the button in the elevator. The glass cracked. Ashley’s laughter burned his ears with unearned shame. Focus. Fortier. He still had to deal with Louis Fortier. Obfuscate flickered uncertainly. Ashley had taken more than he should’ve. The invisibility lasted until Mornoe managed to get to the car. Hunger gnawed. Bastard.

Monroe had offered to make the drive to Anaheim. As far as kindred were concerned, the Anarch Free State went all the way down to Newport Beach. Most liked that Fortier never showed his face, though his association with Disneyland made him popular with younger licks. Ventrue had money. Money made problems go away. Fortier had served once as a herald to Prince Don Sebastian, before the revolution turned the tides. He talked his way into MacNeil’s good graces. Decades more had seen him a secretive outsider with more pride than sense. He had gotten on the wrong side of more than one baron by butchering a gang who offended or disrespected him. During the Sabbat siege, he was slow to answer. Pessimistic Anarchs still said Fortier had planned on fleeing those early nights, before MacNeil swept the archbishop. When Garcia had gone to war against another gang in East LA, Fortier had only joined when it was all but won. Tirelessly, he had assured Garcia he had come to join him. A selfish loyalty was something Monroe could understand.

What Monroe had not mentioned to Hawthorne, though, was that Fortier had offered the meeting. For what, he did not know. Monroe trusted in the persuasive lingering traditions of the Ventrue clan to protect him. Blood will out. 

The opulent colonial manor that greeted him made him cautiously optimistic. It did not have neighbours, as such, and took advantage of the privacy. Fortier had ghouls, not so much as a staff as a private army dressed in black like clones. One took Monroe’s car, two escorted him to the door, and he spotted at least three more on the perimeter. Electronics crackled. 

Inside, the ghouls were far more presentable. Young and tactile, with quiet respectful movements, every one a woman and each more beautiful than the one before. They lived as mute shadows in the house of their master, which they kept as a perfect reflection two centuries out of date. 

Fortier appeared at the top of the grand staircase. Monroe had only met him twice, to facilitate recreation in Disneyland after hours. They shared a clan. Among every other clan among Anarchs, that meant nothing. To Ventrue who left the Camarilla, it was a shared understanding, a discontent, a mirrored past of suffering under a yoke.

To Fortier, it seemed, little had changed. He dressed in a three-piece suit with a cravat, sharp sideburns cut across his face, his hair too long for modern tastes. He extended a hand. No ring. “It was good of you to come.”

No offer of lineage.

Monroe took it. “It was good of you to have me.”

Fortier led him to a parlour. Ghouls fled like cockroaches from the light. Nothing had changed. Fortier prized his independence insofar as it allowed him to posture as a Camarilla Ventrue. Pleasantries proceeded almost on script, delicate words about refreshments and the bad weather of late.

“There are a great many shadows moving in the dark,” said Fortier swiftly. “Princes North and West, the Sabbat, vying factions of Anarchs, and, of course, yourself.”

“I am not the first person to whom you have issued an invite.”

“You are,” Fortier assured him. He sipped blood from a glass, while Monroe’s remained untouched. “But only because I have no quarrel with the Camarilla or Anarchs. Currently, neither prince thinks to look further south than LAX, for which I and my childer are blessed.”

Monroe let his eyes drift. A ghoul lurked at the edge of the room, peering with large eyes. As soon as she spotted his stare, she ran. Louis Fortier was a collector of beauty.

“Then, we find ourselves not only without quarrel but allied,” said Monroe thoughtfully. “I intend to remain independent from such struggles, as well. In New York, I saw how such wars played out. While they may stay cold for years, played with intrigue and assassination, when it heats, it does with the strength of a coming dawn.”

“I have no intention to belie your experience, formidable as it is, but I must add my own,” he said coolly. “ _ Pft.  _ La Terreur ruled France after the Revolution. History may yet never repeat, but it is familiar, no? Whatever barons say, we became the elite, the ruling class. And now, the path of the Camarilla is clear. Ripped out, fled, or butchered. And I do believe my dear friend, Isaac Abrams, would question if this war was not yet hot already.” Fortier set his mostly empty glass down and a ghoul manifested to refill. His eyes lingered possessively over the ghoul before she, too, left. “And, yet, your protection has prevented a Camarilla purge from reaching its natural and ordained completion.”

Monroe offered a stilted smile. Jan had readily agreed to the suggestion. After all, Jan wanted a city of once-Anarchs ready to follow Monroe, whatever his title. Abrams had sway and was worth more alive than dead.

_ Prince of Los Angeles _ .

“Are you inferring something?” asked Monroe.

Fortier’s thin lips smiled. “You know how to kneel.”

“I am Ventrue.”

“As I am. I never learned the skill. Ask Villon.”

Prince of Paris and Lord of the Courts of Love, which stretched through France, Belgium, and Switzerland. His name should’ve been an indication, but Fortier had worked hard to destroy his accent.

“You might’ve known my grandsire,” said Monroe lightly. “Jenine Portier, Ventrue Primogen in Paris.”

Fortier threw his head back and laughed. “How dreadfully Camarilla! Upon a personal meeting, so desperate to find a thread of connection, no matter how slim.” He shook his head. “I hated the witch.”

“I promise, the feeling is mutual with all who have met her.”

“We all loathe our sires and grandsires and great-grandsires,” he said. “And still, we pay for their sins and walk on the leash of their Beasts. Even my most wayward childe, he will pay unto me as I have unto mine own.”

Ventrue sired outside the Camarilla were almost unthinkable. Monroe couldn’t manage pity for them, though.

Fortier fixed him with that distant implacable look and Monroe knew he came close to the purpose of this meeting.

“I wish his lessons are gentle,” said Monroe sincerely.

Fortier made a noise halfway between a laugh and a scoff. “ _ Pft _ . He doesn’t deserve it, the petulant, ambitious, ungrateful wretch that he is. Gifted with eternity, nobility, saved from eternal damnation and horrid death on a battlefield, and yet knows nothing of loyalty to such a savior. 

“I have learned much of siring since then, of course. I was but a neonate myself, siring on merciful impulse like some lovestruck Toreador.  _ Pft _ . The fairer sex, of course, have less capability for such betrayal or complexity. Offer a beautiful woman eternity and they contemplate only taking longer in front of the mirror before going out.  _ Pft _ . A man tastes the bond and knows slavery by his very soul, but such subordination to women comes natural. They think it love.”

Fortier lifted the glass to his lips again, tipping it to Monroe. “You were cleverer than I, at least as a neonate. You waited until the opportunity presented itself, chose a woman — even if she may not be beautiful — and she came back to you, weak and reliant. Shame for her… damage.”

Monroe did not entertain the impulses that rose in him. If he recognised and legitimized them, he would like as not diablerize Fortier as well. That would not do. Jan might not begrudge him the murder, but a second diablerie could mark the end of them.

He forced a mild smile. “How do you know my childe is blind?”

Fortier’s smile turned smarmy. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Westside. Fortier’s arm was long by ghouls. His freeness with this blood was the reason Monroe wanted him as an ally. To think he had casual, disposable eyes in Westside would allow Zari to come back without losing an advantage. While Ashley could surely do it, Monroe didn’t dare put another egg in his basket.

“What are you interested in, by me?” asked Monroe.

“Well, then. I am interested in fine blood, beautiful women, and good books. Chiefly, though, I am interested, primarily, in my rights. Rights are important, no?” Fortier’s brilliant smile bit.

“Of which are you most interested?” asked Monroe cautiously.

Fortier evaluated him minutely. “The right of le tour de l’enfant. You sired well over a month ago, now. She is ripe for her tour. My right, as a Ventrue, is the tradition of partaking. Surely, there is none older than myself, none should come before me.”

A hostage.

It was then that Monroe remembered Victoria Ash, too, had roots in France. After fleeing her sire centuries before, she had risen in the American south to become alternatively a herald, keeper of elysium, and even Toreador Primogen of Atlanta. Victoria Ash, who had ambitions beyond Barty, regardless how well Jan thought she was chained to him. And Westside had a French prince, too. France produced the most bad-tempered Ventrue, as it was Toreador territory. 

As Monroe stalled, Fortier’s look grew sterner, harder.

Monroe thought again of the battle the other night, taking the Reapers, Hollowmen, and La Hermandad against a pair of wastrel gangs. Each one would love to take a bite out of Fortier. 

It was not tradition Fortier needled at. It was honour. Pride. No Camarilla would accept the decades long Ventrue Anarch. Fortier had no other choice. It would be foolish to throw Monroe out for the sake of honour. Monroe had the power here. Fortier only postured. He saw how Monroe had protected Abrams, even suspected he had the ear of the Camarilla; surely, he wanted the same.

“I have not considered the agoge for Miss Hawthorne as of yet,” said Monroe. “Such responsibilities are key to establishing trust and culture in a time of peace. On the eve of war, they are distractions I cannot afford. Once Los Angeles has reached an equilibrium, I would be honoured to have you participate in my childe’s agoge.”

“So many words.” Fortier shook his head again. A lip curled and revealed a fang. “You could’ve merely said no.”

“I did not say no. I say, ‘not now’.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“I trust no one, Monsieur Fortier, least of all clanmates.”

His bushy eyebrows crouched low. “The clan has left its mark on us both, a mark none other in this city understand. Does that mean nothing to you?”

“It means everything.”

Fortier lost the fine decorum that surrounded him as his expression darkened. It lost mercy, as he became a creature of nightmare and folklore. Monroe feared for the ghouls in his household after he left. As his sire’s childe, Monroe had cleaned up more than one ghoul who had its head ripped off or entrails pulled.

Monroe stood to leave while he still could. “Monsieur Fortier, thank you for the gracious invitation. I leave my domain open to you and yours, as honoured guests or citizens. When—”

Fortier snapped his fingers with ominous force. A flurry of ghouls rushed to obey.

Monroe bowed and left.

Ghouls fluttered around him like a flock of worrisome birds. They opened the doors to let him pass, silently, not daring to look at or touch him. The valet returned his car. Keys left in the ignition, another ghoul opened the door. When Monroe turned back to the colonial manor house, there didn’t appear to be anyone there. It wasn’t Obfuscate. Only formal training. Monroe considered sending Ashley down here, if he ever got any foul ideas about Ritter’s origins. The Camarilla weren’t the only ones to create ghouls like that.

Monroe drove several blocks, until he could be certain none followed him. He pulled over, exhausted and hungry. And worried. Always worried. Barty was right. So long as he ruled over Anarchs, he could not have a court. Barons did not have courts. Any semblance was suspect, which left it all to him. The responsibility, the triumph, and the failure. He would  _ not  _ have more blood on his hands, yet he knew he would before the city found peace.

Monroe’s phone rang. He gave it a cursory glance and debated not answering.

“What is it, Ritter?” he asked wearily.

“I thought I ought inform you, sir, that Miss Hawthorne has left Blue Moon.”

“Are you with her?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then, I’m not concerned.”

“She’s at the Strike Zone, sir.” Ritter was too well trained to directly contradict Monroe, but he could hear he was concerned.

“I’ll be there in a half hour.”

Pleased, Ritter pitted him with thanks before hanging up. The quiet assaulted Monroe as he drove. He knew Hawthorne too well, what mood would await him, what had driven her to go to a shooting range.

Manuel Rubio had done his best to make himself important and interesting to the Anarchs. The snake sold beer. What else could be asked? He converted an out-of-business bowling alley into a shooting range. Semi-legal, it attracted the right sorts. Corrupt off-duty cops, macho lifeless veterans, and networking criminals. Dawson and God knew how many more ghouls had been gleaned from the Strike Zone.

This late, business was slow. The manager needed a curt word, but he opened the door into the back range. Soundproofed, there was only one gun lane active. Ritter breathed a sigh of relief and took the nod from Monroe as a dismissal. Hawthorne had a disc playing in a CD player, too loud. Monroe turned it down.

Hawthorne must’ve known it was him. She ignored him. She slid out the empty magazine, slid in a new one off the table, and aimed down the alley. The plywood cutout was undamaged. Monroe watched her fire.

Finished, she set down the handgun. “Did you send Ritter away?”

“Yes.”

“Then you tell me. How did I do?”

“You missed.”

She snorted and reached for another magazine, but her fingers brushed empty table. “Would you do me a favour and go pester Donald for another clip?”

“Look at me.”

“Why?” she spat. “What’s the  _ point _ of that?”

“So, I don’t have to talk to the back of your head,” he said calmly.

Hawthorne turned with a grimace, anchoring herself to the alley. “I’m getting better,” she promised, as though it mattered to him. “Ritter said—”

“You of all people know that Ritter’s word, when he knows what you want him to say, is worth little.” Monroe crossed his arms. “I understand. I understand you have spent the last twenty decades valuing yourself based on your usefulness. That—”

“What? That’s changed?” she dared angrily. “Nothing’s changed. Moving from Ventrue ghoul to Ventrue childe is  _ not _ a promotion. It’s just a different collar. Same master.”

Monroe had the grace to feel properly ashamed. “I know you want to be angry. I am an easy and valid target for that anger. One night, though, you will remember all the other fledglings I’ve found. Justin Merlot. Red. Zachary Grimes. Possum.”

“Your blood destroyed any semblance of truth,” she said weakly. “I can’t trust my memories of you, just as I can’t trust those of Fowler, or Portier, or — or Byron.”

The Toreador who had first ghouled her and ripped her from a mortal life. Monroe had never heard her say the name.

“I am not what you fear. Trust that.”

“That’s the worst of it,” she whispered. “I do.”

Monroe dared a step forward. The space between them yawned and it might’ve been a canyon. Hawthorne’s fingers clung tighter to the alley.

“You don’t need to know how to shoot or fight,” he said softly. “Not anymore. It is not how Ventrue do things. Case being, you will always have a ghoul. One, maybe five, maybe more. Relying on them does not make you weak or decrease your worth, value, or competence. Self-defence is another matter, but I doubt all your years of practice and instincts will vanish when Auspex alerts you by senses — or aura.”

“You’re just going to keep talking, aren’t you?” asked Hawthorne with a ghost of a smile.

He nodded. “Until I’ve found something that sticks.”

She stepped away from the alley and pressed the gun into his hands. Her face collapsed. “I went to Jan Pieterzoon,” she confessed. “He refused to take me in, but loaned me one of his ghouls. When I was in Westside…” She trailed off and hung her head.

Monroe neither probed nor brushed it aside. He took her hands as a show of comfort and her fingers wrapped around as though they could strangle him. The gun clattered to the floor and she startled.

“Therese Voerman was only too happy to take me,” said Hawthorne in a dead voice. “As soon as I explained who I was. She… gave me her blood and… and I can’t even blame myself for what I did. No different, just another collar. I served her and her sister, and their twisted ghoul. Kept their wine cellar. Used Pieterzoon’s ghoul to clock people they said to clock. Nothing new.”

The fingers wormed their way under the cuffs of his shirt, pathing under his sleeves.

“How many times did Voerman give you her blood?” he asked, fearing the answer.

“Only once,” she said, but it didn’t relieve her any.

“Small mercies—”

“Pieterzoon never got his ghoul back.” The words poured out of her. “I don’t even know her name. I don’t want to. I wish — I wish it had been an accident, but it wasn’t. She was… perfect. Iron. Impossibly unyielding. Unflappable. She didn’t balk at anything. She didn’t — She was — She never did a thing wrong. Everything, just as I told her. And skilled, perfect.” 

Breath whistled shrill through clenched teeth. Monroe raised a hand to brush away an immaculate curl. Her eyes tightened and a tear squeezed out. His thumb met it and Hawthorne moved into his arms.

“I killed her.” She said it like a prayer, a hope that if she shared it the truth could cease to exist. “God help me, I killed her. Jeanette had — She had a nickname for me, enjoyed tormenting me, and I —” She shook her head. “I took my time. I enjoyed it.”

Hawthorne knew she was not the first kindred to take it out on her ghoul. She would not be the last. To her, who had survived two centuries more by luck than true skill, there would be no excuse.

“I started to be someone I didn’t like,” she said quietly. Her head fell against his chest, slowly, gingerly, as though she thought her presence unwelcome, her fear and shame inconvenient. “And that ghoul paid the ultimate price. No one, in Westside, no one gave a damn. No one noticed. She was  _ mine _ and…” She murmured, distressed and wordless.

Monroe couldn’t even pretend to be surprised. More, in fact, he was surprised by her regret. Hawthorne, and all ghouls truly, became cold-blooded killers. Now, he supposed, she had no orders to fall back on, no one to blame but herself. All her sympathy went to her victim.

“We are not our regrets,” he whispered against her hair. He did his best to not breathe in her scent, but it absorbed him. Almond and cherry and his blood in her veins, leaking through her eyes. “No amends can be made for a life mistakenly taken, but it can be honoured with further actions — prevention, caution, grief. You are no lesser for a mistake. Just as you are no lesser because you cannot shoot a gun or drive a car. Life is not cars and guns, anymore than it is regrets.”

His arms slipped around her waist. As though it knew, the music softened to a track they both knew well. Her hands trailed up his chest and locked behind his neck. They began to sway and she sniffed a wan smile. A finger trailed ghost-like along his collar.

“You make it hard to hate you,” she whispered against him.

“I know, my dear.”


	23. The Ninth Circle

Jack was going to kill Damsel. Her and her “old times’ sake”, and he was back doing Nines’ bitch work. Again. And who was going to get credit for getting rid of the fucking plague-bearer? Not Jack. Not Damsel.

Government cars swarmed the hospital downtown. This late at night, even a camera crew. A smallpox outbreak — who had smallpox in  _ America _ ? Damsel went on and on with words that weren’t hers, talking about how the food supply was compromised, the kine were catching on, the Masquerade was falling. Jack figured it wasn’t a good time to tell Damsel about his and Monroe’s run-in with the FBI in Rubio’s Denny’s last year. 

But Jack knew Damsel had a point. Stuff like smallpox would keep spreading through humans, even without the plague-bearer. It wouldn’t care about barony lines. He could either deal with it now, when it was small, or wait for Monroe to hear and have it cause trouble back in Switzerland.

And so. Jack found himself checking his back, following hobos’ crazed mutterings through the maze of alleys in Downtown. Only so long before a Sabbat found out. For all he knew, the plague-bearer  _ was _ a Sabbat. Just his fucking luck.

“Old Yeller,” Jack scoffed to himself. As if licks weren’t rational thinking creatures that could just be told cold blood exists.

He hoped it was Anarch. If it weren’t, Damsel had stolen him a grenade from Nines. Like she felt bad for him. Old times’ sake.

The alley came to an end. Not even a fence to hop. No fire escape to climb. Just a sewer grate. Jack cast a disgruntled glare at the sky before ducking down. He wished he could turn into an animal without a nose. The tunnels were slick, shining under industrial lights, and the liquid he waded through was not water. It didn’t even come up to his knees but was so thick and dark he couldn’t see his shoes. The Beast complained and whimpered as Jack pulled the lid shut behind him. Not a burrow, but manmade. And it belonged to other beasts.

Experience told him he had no fewer than five Nosferatu already aware he was in their warrens. Those rats probably had friends. Jack reached out, clicking his tongue, but they scampered away. Afraid. Like they didn’t know a vampire’s scent. Even rats, who the Nos loved, had short memories. Nosferatu hadn’t been around for a while.

Jack did his best to not breathe as he waded through the filth. The hobo mentioned a tunnel the monster had crawled out of. But  _ which _ tunnel?

When Jack spotted the tunnel, he shut his eyes to collect himself. He could just go back to Damsel and tell her to fuck herself. Nines could come down here. He could crouch down in that low, mostly flooded tunnel, dirty his clothes and spend the next week scrubbing the smell out of his nostrils. Fat chance.

Jack took a deep breath of the comparatively clear air before dipping down. Water seeped through his jeans, leaving them heavy and sticky. It soaked his boots and crawled up his t-shirt. He was going to kill that red-headed bitch.

The tunnel drooled the sludgy water like a waterfall at its end. A good ten foot drop before the murky water. The atrium filled with rusted metal scaffolding, holding the city of Los Angeles up. Thirty feet above his head, dirty bare bulbs cast pale white light. 

Jack transformed into a bat and flew to the scaffolding. He would rather smell the sewer than deal with the water. On dry land again, he shook out the wetness. As the smell aged in his nose, he squeaked a groan and regretted his decision.

Two tunnels peeled off from the T-junction. One shone with cheery light. Jack looked again at the narrow tunnel he had come from. Most vampires could make the jump down, but not many would take the face-full of sewer waterfall to climb up. Jack’s best guess was more Gangrel, but the Beast’s nagging fear would never make this a haven. 

Reluctantly, he left his drafty perch and beat his wings. The lit tunnel was more than he had expected, though, and he almost fell out of the air. The scaffolding had been reinforced with cement into pillars, flanking an alley up to a makeshift altar. A trashcan fire burned below the mutilated remains of some poor fuck stapled up to the wall.

Jack had visions of the Hollowmen, of Sabbat, but then he recognised the lick at the altar.

Jack let himself fall back to two legs. The splash made the vampire turn. He was a nasty grey-blue colour, his head bulbous, and skin cracked across a naked scalp and chest to reveal shriveled pinky organs. Ears hung pointed and askew. He snarled a smile with a mouth of jagged teeth.

“Found your way down here, did you?” he asked. “Following the stench of entrails and rotting flesh? Hungry? There’s meat galore in my kingdom, brother!”

“Kanker?” asked Jack tentatively. “That you, buddy? You doing alright?”

Kanker, like most licks in Downtown, had been good buddies with Nines. He was a whiny, fanatical, bootlicking sort, but Jack hadn’t expected him to go down like this.

Kanker howled a laugh. “Of course.  _ Brother _ Kanker they call me now. High Lord of the Diseased Halls of the Dead. Look around you! The tidal wave of blood, the Red Star, the maggot-ridden mortal shells — these are the signs, brother, the coming of a new age!”

Jack nodded mutely. What happened? It only took one. One sanctimonious nutcase, to take some desperate Nos and turn him into… this. To take one passionate Brujah. To take one greedy mage.

“What’s going on?” Jack forced himself to ask.

“The Brotherhood of the Ninth Circle!” cried Kanker. “The darkest dawn is almost upon us. Come! Join us in these, the Final Nights, as we share this unholy communion with our human herd.”

Kanker reached a sticky and muscled arm to clasp Jack in a hug. “The doors have been open, feral. The seals are broken. Come, let me induct you into the mysteries of the Ninth Circle.”

Jack swiftly ducked out of that before Kanker could drag him anyway. “I’m alright, thanks. I—” He could only gape, mind empty. What was he supposed to say? Humans were just herd animals, unworthy of notice or consideration to a lot of licks. And Kanker didn’t care about the food supply, because, clearly, the world wasn’t lasting much longer. Jack couldn’t give up. “Could you try not to be such a Typhoid Mary?” he asked weakly. “Just, maybe, get yourself some cold blood. You aren’t the first lick to contract—”

“Have you not listened!” bellowed Kanker. A misshapen fist pounded his chest. “I am the High Lord of the  _ Diseased _ —”

“Look, man, the Last Round wants you dead. Unless the pandemic is put down—”

“Let them come. Let the false leeches of Lilith rain. Their blood will water the fallow fields and new growth—”

“Maybe I just need to meet your Super High Lord,” he begged. Jack wasn’t ready to give up on him. This wasn’t Kanker. It was his cult’s master using his mouth to spout bullshit.

Kanker growled, low and suspicious. “You came here by the False Nine. You aren’t here for revelations.” His long fingers curled into claws and he advanced.

Jack pulled the pin on the grenade, shaking his head. “Man, I’m sorry, but I’m not dying in a sewer.”

Kanker hesitated, surprised, and lost his chance to tackle it from Jack. Instinct took over and he fled down the hall, invisible. Footsteps splashed to mark his way. Jack grimaced and threw. The grenade exploded and threw Jack against the wall. It knocked over the trashcan fire, which went out with a sizzle in the sewage. The ceiling rumbled threateningly. Bits of rotting Nosferatu clung to the pillars.

“Fuck,” he muttered. Jack gave one more look to the hanging human above. “Sorry.”

He took off as a bat and didn’t transform again until he was on a ladder getting out of there. He crawled out and sucked lungfuls of clear air, leaning in the alley. Goddamnit. Poor fucking Kanker. It had been his own damn fault, spreading smallpox among the homeless, but it hadn’t really been him. And if it was a brotherhood, there was at least one more.

It came to him instantly. Locke. Zoe Locke. The Toreador made a home out of the Empire Hotel, not far away.

Jack reluctantly peeled himself off the alley and started walking. Part of him wanted to get another grenade from Damsel. Another part wanted to leave this whole mess to her. He had already killed one lick. Didn’t need to make it a double.

Jack hadn’t spent a long time Downtown as a fledgling. But even a few years gave him the lay of the land. Everyone knew everyone. When Nines gave his approval to someone else, it was an open show at the Last Round. Everyone came round, had drinks, celebrated. It was an ugly, extended family that was suspicious of everyone else and low-key wanted to kill everyone. Locke and Kanker used to be a weird couple. A Toreador who saw beauty in the monstrous Nosferatu. Weird, but peaceful.

The Empire Hotel was budget extravagant. Gold wallpaper, but mildew damage around the crown moldings. The overstuffed chairs were thin pleather. The facade didn’t fool many and the hotel bar was almost empty. Empty except for a woman with dusky tanned skin and fire red hair. Her dress was slinky, sexy, grimy, and stolen. She flirted with the bartender in a low pur, fingering an untouched martini.

“Zoe,” Jack called.

She turned and growled. The bartender broke from the spell and stared.

“Don’t call me that name,” she said waspishly. “I am Jezebel. Jezebel Locke.”

Jack passed a hand down his face. “Alright. Alright, Jezebel. Can we talk?”

With one more catching look at the bartender, Jezebel led Jack upstairs to her room. The four-poster bed had a thin mattress and the same sheets as the Motel 8 down the road.

“I’m glad you came,” she said in a husky voice. “I have such things to show you, little morsel… such beautiful, dirty little things.”

Jack felt the Presence and recoiled, wrinkling his nose. “I’m alright, thanks. I wanted to talk about the CDC. There’s some outbreak among the humans.”

“Mmm. Yes.” She ran a hand up his shirt, trapping him against the wall. “Come on, now. Don’t deny yourself the pleasure of Jezebel’s talents. We, too, can intertwine on the way to the Ninth Circle, full of the sweet sickness.”

Jack gently took her by the shoulders and pushed her backwards. “Look. Jezebel. I don’t know what to tell you, what I gotta say to shake you outta this, but we really shouldn’t draw attention to ourselves. This plague thing, the CDC coming. Hell, it’s poisoning our food supply, if you need to see it like that.”

She shook her head. Her green hazel eyes were blank, glassy. “Never mind such things. Come and join the enlightened, indulging your animal instincts, Gangrel, until both kine and kindred lay spent upon the altar. Desire is our truth and death is our  _ proof _ .”

Jack stared. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said, slowly and clearly. But it did to her.

She whimpered. “The truth will be shown to you as I drink the blood from your twice-dead body. Oh, it will be ecstasy —  _ ecstasy _ , little morsel! Sweet—”

Jack held her at arm's length as she scrambled, snarling, fangs hungry for diablerie. “Alright!” he shouted. “Calm down, you nutcase. You think Nines’ gonna look fondly on some sick fuck drinking lifesblood?”

Locke hadn’t even frenzied. She tried to force it, but still heard. There was mortal intelligence in her eyes. It didn’t make it any easier. The Toreador couldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. And she was a young thing. 

It didn’t take long. 

He threw her across the hotel room and snapped a leg on the desk. Plywood. Great. Locke got right back up and charged, willfully, right into the splintering plywood. She collapsed in his arms.

Jack stroked her hair, grimacing. “I’m sorry.”

He hitched her limp body over his shoulder.

Damsel would have hell to pay for this.

The doorman just stared as Jack passed him by. Jack nodded. “Evening.”

The doorman nodded. “Uh-huh.”

Amazing how no one stopped you if you carried an unconscious-looking woman over your shoulder in the middle of the night in Los Angeles. Probably said more than Jack really wanted it to say. But he was too mad to think about that. He walked all the way back to the Last Round, fuming all the while. He shoved the door open and felt a hinge bend. He left it open. Wasn’t his problem.

“Damsel!” he shouted. “Damsel! The fuck is the girl?”

A couple of licks played darts and didn’t give him a second look. Ricky polished a glass behind the bar but only shrugged.

Ignoring that feeling deep in his gut, Jack marched up the stairs to Cloud Nine. Damsel sat with Nines in the corner, that look on her face. Jack wanted to punch it off. Nines gave Jack a dispassionate smile. Jack snarled.

He dropped Locke. The body hit the floor like a sack of potatoes.

Damsel jumped and stood. Anger devoured her surprise. “What the fuck are you doing up here?” she demanded. “You ain’t got no business—”

“I got  _ this _ business!” he snapped, talking over her to Nines. “ _ Your _ dirty work. What the fuck kind of barony are you running here? Did you know?”

Damsel turned as red as her hair and lips. “Fuck you,” she snarled. “Get the fuck out of here. Downstairs. Get! Don’t talk to Nines—”

“It’s alright,” said Nines with that gruff smile. He stood. “What’s the problem?”

Jack pointed down to Locke. “How long has this been going on?” he asked, hoping that Nines had a miracle answer. Some words that would make the night make sense. “Zoe. Jezebel, I mean. Please, man. You can’t tell me you screen everyone like the TSA and then let them fuck off and fuck up like this.”

Nines pushed Locke onto her back with his boot. Her eyes whirled as she took in the room. He sighed. “We’ll take care of her,” he promised.

That wasn’t an answer. It hit Jack like a punch to the gut. He hadn’t realised how much he still wanted to believe Nines was infallible, the Robin Hood he wanted everyone else to think he was.

“Locke’s the plague-bearer?” asked Damsel in a low voice.

“Some gang of the Ninth Circle,” said Jack, scoffing.

“At least they chose a good number,” said Nines with a smile.

Jack glared. “There’s a couple dozen people in the hospital. Eight humans dead. Even with the plague-bearers gone, it’ll be weeks before the CDC leaves. Weeks that we all gotta buckle down.  _ Two _ licks are dead, good people who got corrupted by someone—”

“Who?” asked Nines. “Where is he?”

Jack couldn’t believe what he was seeing, what he was hearing. “Kanker had his twenty-fifth deathnight party downstairs,” he said. “He cried when he had to leave his brother, back in Santa Monica. He won the Christmas drag race of ’99. You held him. Called him brother. Promised him a place, a good life. And I blew him up with a grenade tonight.”

“It’s all very sad but—”

“But you don’t care,” said Jack with a bitter laugh.

Damsel punched him. Harder than she had in a long time. His jawbone turned to shrapnel and a piece speared his tongue. Jack pulled it out with a groan and spat out the mouthful of blood and bone. It healed with a burning pain.

“Thanks,” he said thickly.

Every inch of her trembled in wordless rage.

“Where did you get that grenade from?” asked Nines with a knowing smirk.

Damsel’s rage went out like a blown candle. Her eyes reflected horror. She turned to face Nines.

“I stole it from you,” said Jack quickly. “Figured if I was getting sent out to do your dirty work by your lieutenant, I had free run of the armory.”

For a moment, Jack thought Nines would hit him, too. Then, it passed. “Any time, man.” He laughed. “Just wish you had asked.” Nines stepped closer and his eyes did that thing, became soft and warm and the world shrunk down until it was just the two of them. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. He lay a hand on the side of Jack’s face, a father, a sire, a friend. “You’ve done a great thing here. Because of what you did, licks can live in peace, feed on healthy blood.”

Jack could only stare pitifully. He realised, then, why Nines seemed so infallible, so perfect, why people became so attracted to him, would kill and die and lose themselves over his praise. He realised it as Nines stepped back. 

Jack felt the same thing walking into Blue Moon, every time he found himself in twenty feet of Ashley Swan.

Brujah had three native Disciplines, like every clan, but most worked hard to make sure everyone forgot the third. Potence. Everyone knew Brujah hit hard. They could jump small buildings and send you flying with a good punch. Celerity. So many moved faster than could be seen, a blur, a zip. Combined, it made fighting them next to impossible. Presence.

Goddamned _ Presence _ .

“This is the last time,” Jack warned. “You, me. This. We’re through. I’m not gonna crawl through sewers and kill licks for a fucking pat on the head. Not again.”

“No,” said Nines. His smile warmed and he lay a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “You won’t. You’ll do it because you know it’s the right thing. Because you are a good man and you take a personal interest in all our safety. No one gets a party because they cleaned their room.”

“Maybe they should.” But Jack felt small, like a grumpy child. It shamed him. He didn’t even know if it was him-him or Nines interfering. “But maybe someone should make sure no cults spring up.”

Nines looked at Jack like he was the one who had lost it. “What d’you mean ‘cult’? The Brotherhood are just — were just, I guess, a group of friends. Like any other gang.”

Jack frowned. “I… I never told you they called themselves the Brotherhood.”

“Jack,” he said softly. And Jack felt the Presence.

Jack pulled back. “You  _ knew _ . You knew these crazy, end-time, Gehenna cult nutcases would only get worse, make trouble one night—”

“Freedom is freedom,” said Nines determinedly. “Freedom of beliefs, of way of life, to make mistakes.”

“And get everyone else to clean them up,” he snapped.

“Anarchy.”

“Anarchy,” repeated Jack, shaking his head. “Anarchy. That’s not supposed to mean ‘fuck you, I got mine’. What’s the point of it, then?”

Damsel found her voice, or at least Nines’ words to put in it. “Freedom.”

Jack couldn’t even look at either of them. “We’re done,” he said again, turning back. He almost felt bad about leaving Locke behind with them. She had to die, he knew, and Jack wanted to force them to look at the ugly dirty work. Force a little blood on Nines’ hands for once.

Now, he didn’t even know if he could trust Nines to do that. 

“Leave him,” ordered Nines. “Let him go.”

Damsel didn’t follow. Jack smirked, thinking how much she wanted to finish the beat down she started, but he couldn’t find any humour in it. There was no sport. His jaw throbbed with more than pain. Jack did his best to press that from his mind. Some things were just beyond thinking about. Worrying never accomplished nothing.

Jack took to the wings on reflex and the city opened up. The wind fluttered through his feathers and he was alone in the dark skies. He hadn’t realised where he headed until he perched in his favourite tree outside Sage Memorial. It had a nice branch, sticking out over the sidewalk. Just the right size to grip with his oversized crow claws. Straggling leaves on a mostly bare branch above him tickled his head in the wind.

Briefly, Jack wondered what time it was. Not many cars. Then, the doors to Sage opened and a man left. Dustin Cohen. Three AM, then. Shift change. For a moment, Dustin looked right up and Jack froze, worried, before he realised he was a crow.

Dustin passed under the branch and continued to his car.

On a lonely impulse, Jack dropped from the tree. “Hey, man. I—”

“Fucking hell.” Dustin stumbled against the road, turning to stare. He panted. In the quiet, his heart beat like a captured bird. “Scared the crap outta me.”

Jack offered a smile. “Sorry? How was work? Isn’t this late for you?”

“Fine. I always stay up this late anyway.” Dustin yawned.

“Are you headed home or…?”

He shrugged. “Kind of. Maybe. Technically, it’s Arbor Day, so I got some drinking to catch up on.” When Jack just looked, he winced. “Uh, Tu BiShvat. It’s, like, Jewish Arbor Day. Plant trees. Happy birthday, trees. We’re gonna have a Seder tomorrow. You know what, nevermind.” Dustin turned back to his car. “Have fun at Sage.”

“Why?” asked Jack. He scratched the back of his head.

“Why what?”

“Why nevermind?”

Dustin turned back to him and smiled faintly. “Alright. Seder’s a ritual feast-type dinner. During, we drink wine. Four cups, from white to red. So, I, uh.” He winced again. “I was making a joke?”

Jack smiled. “It was pretty funny.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Dustin laughed. “You’re just being nice.”

“So, what? Next time you make a joke about Tu… Jewish Arbor Day, I’ll laugh.”

“Tu BiShvat,” he said again.

Another bodily function joined his heart rate, as it calmed. His stomach rumbled again.

“Did you have dinner?” asked Jack, concerned.

Dustin laughed. “Kind of. You know, like, almost ten hours ago.” He considered it. “I could eat again, though.”

Jack accepted the invitation and slipped into Dustin’s car, directing him to the Red Dragon in Chinatown. He spotted the White Cloud down the road, which only made him think of Mai and the Bone Flowers. Jack wondered if he was still welcome after his spat with Nines. Hoped so. The last thing he wanted was for it to splash back on Monroe and the rest of them.

“I was gonna settle for Wendy’s,” asked Dustin as he found an empty parking spot. “When do they close?”

Jack grimaced. “I don’t know if they do.”

A good sign of vampire patronage was a business open much too late. Then again, maybe the Red Dragon made good money on stoners ordering Chinese in the early morning. Jack didn’t like to think that the Red Dragon was lick-owned.

Kiki sat behind the front desk, in the middle of giving herself a manicure. “What?” she asked Jack in Mandarin, a single spat syllable.

Jack patted Dustin on the back. The kid nearly fell over. “He’s hungry, Kiki,” he said, replying in the same language. “Feed this one.”

She gestured with a nail file. “Do you need someone to tell you how to eat at a restaurant?”

Jack rolled his eyes sharply and pulled a bewildered Dustin to a table in the corner. After another look at Kiki, who hadn’t moved, Jack got up and went behind the carved wood wall to fetch silverware, a menu, and a pitcher of water.

Dustin raised an eyebrow. “Your family own this place?”

Jack laughed. “No. Kiki’s dad does. She was a nightmare as a child and never grew out of it.”

Dustin glossed over the menu, thinking. 

“Tell me when he knows,” Kiki shouted. She pulled up a glossy magazine and paged through.

“Okay,” he called back.

Dustin snickered. “You’d tell me if she was bad-mouthing me, right?” he asked, suddenly subconscious. “What do you want to eat?”

“Oh, I already ate.” Jack breezed quickly past the lie before Dustin could settle on it. “I know Kiki’s a bit much, but her aunts and cousins work here, too. And they throw a great show on for Xīnnián.”

Dustin’s eyes sparkled. “How long were you waiting to trot that one out?”

“It’s just Chinese New Year.” Jack smiled. “It’s in a few more weeks.”

“Maybe I’ll see about getting a night off.” He yawned again.

Jack hollered at Kiki for a pot of green tea. “Caffeine,” he explained as Dustin started.

Cursing all the while, Kiki stormed off back to the kitchen and dropped the pot and cups with a nasty look before returning to her manicure and magazines.

“Maybe I should take your order,” said Jack with a conspiratorial smile.

“That what you do? Drop into other peoples’ workplaces and make yourself at home?”

“When I feel like it.” Jack hesitated. “Do you want me to go?”

Dustin took a deep breath and let it out. It smelled like energy drinks and sugary candy. He smiled. “I want… fried rice. I could just eat an entree of fried rice, really. Chicken.”

Jack returned the grin and stuck his head into the kitchen. A cook, another relative of Kiki’s, sat in the corner with a book. “Uh, hello?” he asked in accented English.

“Kiki’s being Kiki,” said Jack in Mandarin. “I’m taking our own order. Just a plate of chicken fried rice. Extra chicken. Extra scallions.”

The cook nodded, understanding. “I’ll bring it.”

Jack thanked him and returned to their table. Dustin started some conversation about his homework he had been working on. Some bullshit accounting class he struggled with. The quiet in Sage helped, but what he really needed was a miracle.

Jack struggled to keep his mind on the table. A group of people had entered the restaurant. Chinese, with a grim tough-guy look Jack was more used to seeing on vampires than humans. Undeniably humans, though. Kiki seemed to know them. A plastic bag traded hands and Jack relaxed. Thank God. The Red Dragon wasn’t owned by vampires. It was owned by the Tong. What a relief. The gangsters left quickly.

The cook came around with the fried rice. Extra chicken. Extra scallions. Dustin put a generous portion on his own plate and tucked in. Jack did his best to not look hungry. Vampires were always hungry. It wasn’t easy. Inevitably, every now and then, maybe a birthday or just a Wednesday, he would take out the receptionist at Sage who had the graveyard shift. Dinner, though Jack preferred a movie. Anything where he didn’t have to not eat. A couple times, he had taken them to Blue and had drinks. They went back to his place or to hers, maybe he had to kiss them, but he would feed. They passed out, exhausted, and he left. To Ryuko, it had never been cheating. More than once, he called it grocery shopping. Jack never liked that.

Jack wondered if Dustin would be any different to Ryuko. He wondered if Ryuko would care. Part of Jack hoped he did.

Dustin sat back, overfull and content. He burped and drank more tea. “That was damn good.” He pushed forward the other half of the fried rice. “You take the leftovers.”

“No, I—”

“Come on. My mom would flip if she saw I had an extra meal. Take it.” When Jack just looked at him, confused, Dustin sighed. “I got a few extra pounds, in case you didn’t notice.”

“I didn’t. You know, donating blood burns calories. It’s a worthy cause.”

Dustin laughed. Jack almost explained the sarcasm of the joke, then stopped. He just joined in the laugh.

Jack reluctantly took the leftovers, only if Dustin let him pay. That was another fight in itself, one that Kiki wasn’t in the mood for. Jack didn’t translate the curses she laid on them before she accepted his credit card.

“Anywhere I can drop you off?” asked Dustin.

“Sage is fine. I wanna spend a couple hours there before sun-up,” said Jack with a groan as he settled into the car.

Dustin’s brow furrowed. “Long night?” he asked cagily.

Jack thought about the Brotherhood and wondered how Dustin hadn’t mentioned he smelled like the sewers. That was a good friend — or a nose-blind one.

“You got no idea, dude.”

Jack’s phone started ringing before Dustin could pull them out of the parallel park space. He set his phone on silent, shaking his head. He couldn’t believe this woman. His anger piled up as he watched the missed calls tick upwards. Two. Three. Four. By the time Dustin dropped him back off at Sage, it became six.

Jack answered as soon as he shut the door and thanked Dustin for the company.

“You got some steel fangs to call me tonight,” said Jack coldly.

“Cool it, wiseass,” said Damsel. She sighed. “Look—”

“I answered to tell you not to call me. You’re filling up my messagebox.”

“Shut up. This isn’t Nines. He—” She smacked her lips. “He doesn’t want me looking into this. Not me, not anyone else. He’s saying things are fine—”

“And you disagree,” Jack realised.

Damsel didn’t answer. The Last Round filled in her quiet.

“That’s how it starts.”

“Shut up.”

Jack sighed. He didn’t want to shut the door on Damsel. Not really. She made bad decisions. So did Jack. They just had different bad decisions to make.

“What do you need?” he asked.

Damsel stalked away from the chatter and blasting rock music. “Nos’ve abandoned their sewers. I’ve got Deb — you know Deb, right?”

Jack shrugged. “Course I do.”

Deb was hard to forget. She was a Nosferatu who lived in a neon green mascot costume to go out in public. She liked to say that being a dog in public made her part Gangrel. Her radio show was almost as popular as Zari’s zine, as far as lick broadcasting went.

“I got Deb in the backroom with a recording from her show.” Damsel’s voice lowered further. “I think the Sabbat chose a new archbishop, which means war. She’s saying that not all the Nos in the sewers made it out. A bunch are still missing. They’re scared it’s Nictuku.”

“Maybe it’s leprechauns,” he suggested. They were more likely than a bloodline of Nos who exclusively fed on the flesh of main clan Nosferatu.

Damsel sniffed a laugh. “Maybe.”

“If the Sabbat are gearing up, it’s probably szlachta,” said Jack.

“That’s what I was thinking.”

Jack shrugged. “Alright. What am I supposed to do? Go in the sewers and hunt ghouled monsters?”

“Sewers don’t know barony lines.”

Jack realised, then, why Damsel had called. She had no big plan to destroy the Sabbat who grew around Downtown like a festering mold. And Nines wanted this kept quiet, for now. She risked a lot by giving this to Jack — and to Monroe and all the licks in danger.

“Get Skelter to show you the bootlegging tunnels,” said Jack sternly. “You weren’t around for the last Sabbat siege. If they’re gonna attack from inside, better to get out and retaliate than die over Skid Roe. Damsel. Are you listening to me?”

“Yeah,” she whined, “but—”

“Don’t give me your ‘buts’. I don’t want them. I’m trying to give you tools to survive a war Nines ain’t preparing for.”

“He  _ is _ ,” she insisted. “He’s got a bunch of maps and he’s ordered more ammo—”

“He’s not preparing  _ you _ .”

Damsel’s sigh shook. She tried a half dozen ways to start her retort, but they all died before she could finish the first word.

“Hey,” said Jack gently. “When I left, who took care of Locke? I know you and her used to be tight. Was helping her resocialize and stabilize ever put on the table or did he just give you an axe and told you to, what was it? Old Yeller her?”

Damsel hung up on him.

Jack listened to the dial tone as his answer for a minute before hanging up, too.

The night felt that much more claustrophobic and empty. He braced his shoulders against it and pushed his way into Sage. Melissa was behind the desk again, snoring. The sight made him want to smile, but his mouth wouldn’t. She was thrown back in her chair, head crooked over the back. It didn’t look very comfortable. He wished vampires had that magic hypnosis  _ go to sleep _ power. He’d just wake her up and put her back to sleep, more comfy. Maybe with those blankets in the back. They might smell like dog, but they were clean and soft.

Jack gently tapped on the desk. She didn’t wake. Just snored louder.

A cat yowled in the kennels, shrill and needy. A wire door creaked and slammed.

Melissa didn’t react.

A bad feeling crawled up and down Jack’s spine. Vampires didn’t have the power of  _ go to sleep _ . But mages did.

With one more lingering look at the sleeping receptionist, Jack put his hand on the door to the kennels. More animals complained. Cats and dogs alike.

“Shut up.”

Jack knew that voice. He swallowed his mounting fear and pushed his way in. Ryuko reached into one of the honeycombed cages and pulled out Pepsi, the coke-coloured cat. She hissed. A plastic tote sat on the ground. The lid had been clamped, but the clear plastic showed a half dozen cats and small dogs. It rocked as they tried to move around.

“What’re you doing?” asked Jack, his voice distant and confused.

Ryuko stared at him, wide eyed. “I…” He looked from one hand to the other. “I’m a cat burglar.”

Pepsi scratched desperately along Ryuko’s arms. A heavy jacket and gloves protected him as he held her at arm’s length.

“You hate animals.”

Ryuko forced a smile. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” said Jack automatically. “But… I don’t understand.”

“And you won’t,” he snapped.

“This has to do with the Hollowmen, doesn’t it?” he asked, dreading whatever answer Ryuko could give. Pepsi growled, thrashing in his grip. Her fear reverberated to Jack. “Just, drop Pepsi and we can talk this out.”

Ryuko laughed. “ _ Pepsi _ ? Is there a Sprite and Fanta in here, too?”

“Ryu,” said Jack in a hard voice. 

He didn’t even know his voice could do that. Ryuko, apparently, didn’t either. He lost his humour and blinked.

“I am… uh. Magic, that’s all,” he said with a weak shrug. Jack saw something he never thought he’d see in Ryuko. Fear. Fear of the Hollowmen? Of himself? Of Jack?

“You need blood,” said Jack, nodding hopelessly. “Of course. Look, I got a lot of blood I’m not using. Tap me. Or Monroe.”

The word stuck in Ryuko’s throat but when he raised his hollow eyes to Jack he made himself say it. “Sacrifice. Something more complex than a rat.”

“No,” said Jack, disbelieving. He almost smiled as the world fell out beneath him. “No. No. Your magic, you don’t need sacrifices. Sure, there’s… some ugly components, lots of blood — remember, nightfolk blood? — but no. You don’t —  _ no _ . This…”

Ryuko only looked at him, mute and sad. “You don’t understand why I need to do this,” he said. “I get it, you’re pissed.”

“This isn’t you,” said Jack desperately. “Please. You know — You  _ knew _ I watch over Sage, that… Fuck, man. You’re not gonna kill all of them, are you?”

Pepsi must’ve understood and renewed her struggles for survival. She sunk tiny razor fangs into Ryuko’s jacket. He shook her, but it only angered her further.

“The ritual for—” he started.

Jack snarled. “If you say  _ anything  _ about Gehenna or Caine or Lilith or the Abyss, you gotta fucking know you’re lying, man. Those bullshit artists—”

“ _ Bullshit artists? _ ” repeated Ryuko, his voice ticking up an octave in rage. He threw Pepsi across the room and she hit the wall with a yowl. “You think you catch the end of one service and eat up all that Cammy propaganda and think you know what we’re about?”

“ ‘We’—”

“ _ We _ are the Swords of Caine against the Antediluvians, the bloodthirsty monsters that hide in the dark, ready to devour everything this side of the Abyss. You have no idea about that sort of responsibility. Everything —  _ everything _ — we’ve done has been for him, for  _ your _ race, for the Children of Lilith, of Seth. We’re heroes, dude.” He shook his head. “You gotta see that.”

A tear, hot and cold and terrible, trembled down Jack’s spine. All he could do was stare. He felt like he had done this before. Time and time again. Skelter. Damsel. Kanker. Locke. It was the same dance. Different song. And he still didn’t know what to say.

“Please,” he said hoarsely. “Okay. Okay. I got it. But, those cats, those dogs, they never did nothing. They’re just innocent, man.”

Ryuko jerked back. “We can give them purpose. But, I understand, it’s not about the animals.”

“It’s absolutely about the animals,” said Jack. The sorrow burned into anger. His face twisted. “I should’ve seen this back when you met Pisha. You just don’t know where to stop. Do you even have a stop? Or is it just what the Hollowmen tell you to do?”

“I’m not some brainless yes-man,” snapped Ryuko. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“That’s worse. You can see how that’s worse, though, can’t you?”

Ryuko’s snarl burned with a familiar hatred, but it was no longer a joke. It was sincere. Ryuko stalked over to where Pepsi cowered under a chair. He dragged her out.

Jack slid a hand down his face. “I can’t — I can’t let you leave, Ryu. You—”

Ryuko laughed. “What’re you gonna do, Jack? Hit me?”

He put his other hand on the plastic tote and shoved Pepsi under his arm. He reached for the vial. In a moment, he would slick his fingers and jump through the ley lines. He could go anywhere. A sacrificial altar. A mage’s workshop.

Jack took a warning step forward, fists raised, but Ryuko saw right through it. His eyes glittered and he laughed again. Pepsi squirmed and her eyes bulged. Ryuko dipped his fingers in blood, found the invisible ley line, grabbed it, and vanished. Him, Pepsi, and the tote.

Jack’s hands trembled, but he forced himself to latch the kennels that Ryuko had left hanging open. Emotions bled from him with every second, leaving him numb. A thousand things he should’ve done, could’ve done. But the time had passed. Their time had passed. Almost fifty years. The worst part was that Ryuko didn’t think anything had been done by it. And it would continue. Jack knew this dance. It would continue until Ryuko could barely stand the sight of him. Maybe now, wherever he was, he knew he done wrong. But that, too, would fade.

It would all fade.

Jack whimpered. The whine that escaped his lips was more animal than anything, a sound that vibrated through his chest as he struggled to catch the elusive breath. What had he done? What  _ should  _ he have done? Door. He stood, hands still shaking, and struggled to grasp the doorknob. The Beast cried, but he was determined to not let it free.

No hunters were lone hunters. The Gangrel Beast knew this well. Predators formed packs, bonds of blood and choice to face their night and struggles. To lose one was worse than a stake in the heart. It always was.

The door opened. Paws touched the street, and he raced. Faster. Further.


	24. Pomegranate Rose

The fugue passed like the sun sinking over the horizon. Zari came back to her senses, slowly, confused, to an empty and quiet apartment. The tape had finished who-knew-how-long ago. Was she some stupid ass neonate? Drooling over basic crooners and tinkly piano like she’d never heard the old, tired songs before.

Toreadors were  _ supposed _ to be jaded and critical. It was the only way to ignore beauty.

The mixed tape had come with another bouquet of flowers on her doorstep. And nail polish. The expensive stuff in a sleek little bottle. Zari hadn’t had a manicure in too long. She didn’t have the time to start one tonight or go to the salon. Jeanette wanted to go to the Lemonade Stand. The grand opening was last week and, according to her, it was popping off. 

Zari sighed and hit eject on the tape. She turned it over and over again. No label. The sensation, fresh from the fugue, tingled in her fingers. The smoothness of the plastic, the lingering emotions clinging like a bad smell. Fear. Anticipation. Indulgence. Like he was just as uncertain and fearful as she was, like he lived on the fantasy of what-if.

She didn’t want to go out. She wanted to stay and listen, lost in the hurricane of nothingness as it consumed her.

“Stupid, silly, weak bitch,” she muttered.

She tossed the tape on the coffee table and stood to get ready. So long as Jeanette was with her, so was Therese, in a way, and Zari knew she shouldn’t be  _ too _ sexy. It reflected on the crown. The black dress she chose was more conservative than she would’ve picked. For Jeanette, it would be boring. For Therese, scandalous. How could two sisters be more different?

Finishing her makeup, Zari reached by reflex for her perfume. Almost every Toreador wore some floral derivative. Hers was spicy, but the lilac clean and fresh. Ashley wore it, too. He mixed it with some aftershave, but she didn’t know if she could stomach his comments. 

_ Ask why _ , he murmured in her ear.  _ Feeling guilty, my love? Do you not want to face your music? _

Zari groaned and spritzed. She wore it first. It was hers, damnit. 

Jeanette picked her up in Therese’s car, thankfully driven by Therese’s ghoul. Zari didn’t know if she could survive Jeanette’s driving. The girl embraced her like a long lost sister and ran a slinky hand back across Zari’s face, her neck and shoulder.

“We gonna have fun, little swanling,” breathed Jeanette.

“Not that sort of fun,” said Zari firmly.

Jeanette pouted but sat back, looking up through eyelashes heavy with mascara. “But  _ fun _ . You haven’t even seen the Stand in all its lemony glory yet. You’ve been spending so much boring time with my sister and those stupid boys, you deserve a girls’ night.”

“I thought we were going to go meet Ashley,” she said with a sigh.

Jeanette frowned. “I thought he counted? Does he not count? There we go. Give me a smile, girl.”

Zari let the smile worm larger until Jeanette traced a hovering line over her lips with a fingertip. There was nothing with the smile, though. Zari didn’t scare easily. She wasn’t scared. But she knew Ashley wouldn’t c0me alone. And she knew he would come with his childer. And she hadn’t spoken to Aisha in ages.

The Lemonade Stand had a prime spot on Sunset. A giant neon lemon glimmered from the upper floor. Hoards of rich kids and clubbers waited anxiously at the front door, crisp hundred dollar bills in their black-nailed fists. An endless techno house music screamed out into the sidewalk.

When the line first noticed they cut ahead, Zari felt the glares and scoffs. Then, the men found themselves far more interested in Jeanette’s short skirt. She twirled for them, kissed her middle finger and offered it. Zari backhanded them with a flash of shameful Presence.

The inside was no better, a kaleidoscope of flashing lights and sounds. Humans had their drunken fun, dancing and hooking up. A DJ with coily blonde hair spun the records on the stage. Zari didn’t want to eat. She wanted her wits about her. Jeanette had a different idea. Even without Presence, she was a force few mortals could stand to resist. She had fun with her food until they found the spiral staircase and passed the bouncers up to the VIP level.

“Very Important ’Pires,” Jeanette confided.

Upstairs overlooked the chaos down below, like kings and queens reigning over their court. The humans around were either ghouls or so fucked up they could barely see straight. More than one flopped over a table, drooling. The bar smelled of rich vital blood.

In the center of it all, with his fingers in a mortal toy’s hair, Ashley flashed a smile at them. The girls had come with him, Delilah and Nita, and they had their own amusements in another booth. Zari breathed a fresh sigh of relief. Jeanette sashayed over to him and they exchanged a friendly kiss. The mortal ended up facedown on the floor as she saddled onto his lap. He laughed and toyed with her pigtails. His other hand fell into the crevice between her thighs.

“Do you want some time alone?” asked Zari with a smirk.

“Are you jealous, my sweet?” he purred.

“Feeling nauseous, actually.”

Jeanette rolled her eyes and trailed a hand down his bare chest. “Come  _ on _ , silver fox! I thought you sired this one. How come she doesn’t know how to have fun?”

“Oh, she does. Sometimes, she needs a little reminder. Why don’t you  _ go have fun _ and let me remind her?” 

Jeanette’s already glassy eyes faded away further. Like a robot in a schoolgirl outfit, she stood up and retreated downstairs. Ashley settled lower and patted his lap as an invitation.

Zari raised an amused eyebrow. “Can see you’re enjoying the perks that come with being Monroe’s bitch.”

“We’ll see who’s who’s bitch before all this bullshit is over.” Ashley flicked an invisible piece of lint from his jacket. “So. Fun.”

“Business first.” Zari stepped over Ashley’s forgotten vessel and sat on the far end of the couch. “I didn’t come for a front row seat to your circus.”

Ashley opened his mouth to argue, but something malevolent settled in his face. “As you say. On a scale from Blake to you, how stupid is this prince to name you herald?”

Zari jerked back. “What’s  _ that _ supposed to mean?”

He groaned, exasperated. “Pay attention, girl. Nothing I’ve ever put blood in has had your brains.”

“No,” she snapped. “You think it’s a stupid idea to have me be involved in a domain, in running it—”

“Zari,” he said, bewildered. “This shit isn’t real. You know that, right? You do know that this is all playing pretend. That prince is gonna die, you’re gonna come home, and things’ll square off.”

“Of course I know that.” She forced a laugh, but it was too awkward. 

Ashley didn’t laugh. He watched.

“ _ You _ wanted to go Westside,” he said curtly. “At least pretend it was about getting us information on the new prince. So, let’s start again. For a new Camarilla prince to name an Anarch he has no experience with to his court, that’s stupid. How stupid?”

Zari sat back, thinking. “He trusts Therese Voerman too much. She loves her sister. Apparently, I made a good impression. His court’s… pretty sparse, so I’ve heard from new Cams. I was just plugging a hole. He doesn’t even have all his primogen.”

Ashley chuckled and committed every word to memory. Zari relaxed incrementally. She wasn’t loyal to the prince. Absolutely not. He was degrading and arrogant and too rude. But he valued her, based on merit, on what she  _ did _ for him. 

The information, as basic as it was, did not come out easily. The more she talked, the closer Ashley came, with that look on his face. Like he thought he ruled the world and wanted to do it with her, like he would turn the city to ash if it meant he got his way. She was not loyal to him. Maybe once, but that was years ago, years before she had left him. It had only been three years since she feared him enough to go to Monroe for protection. As she talked about Darsh Amble’s position, he stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. She drifted to silence.

“Is that it?” he asked quietly.

She nodded, mute, anticipating his idea of fun. The vessel at their feet still breathed, but only barely. The feeling died in her chest as she realised how much she had missed it.

There was no desire in his eyes, no amusement. Only a poorly concealed concern. He brushed a coil that hung over her eyes. “When I found you in that alley,” he said softly, “Tobey Amble was already dead. Voerman put a price on the rest of his gang — even Darsh had to stand aside. You were such a scared little thing, without a lick of understanding what had happened. Took you back to that hotel, do you remember? A shower, a meal, and you were a new person. Tobey hadn’t bothered telling you a goddamned thing.” He smiled kindly at the memory. “You lost it when you saw those flowers on the table. Three hours later, I managed to pull you from the fugue. And you cried. And cried. And cried. Soaked me through. I know that woman is gone, but I want you to know, I think about her. A lot.”

Zari’s lips parted, struck. “What… Where’s that coming from?”

“I’m worried,” he said. The smile took the edge off his words, but they still had knives. “Remember where you come from, my dear.”

She met his eyes and felt like she stood on the edge of a bottomless pit, but if she jumped she might fly. Might. It was real. She knew that. Maybe she had always known that. That, somehow, people couldn’t spend decades together without catching  _ some _ kind of feelings for each other.

He was so close. Vulnerable as she had ever seen him.

“How’s Abrams?” she asked innocently.

“Oh, fuck off.” He groaned and threw himself at the other end of the couch. Like that, it was gone. Zari shoved away the unfulfilled hollow in her.

“He Embraced a new bastard, too,” continued Ashley. “An actor. And I  _ know _ he only did it because I’ve been feeding on him. He’s trying to provoke me, to get Monroe to crack down and kick me out.”

“If it hasn’t happened yet, it won’t,” said Zari with a shrug.

He smirked. “He trusts me too much. Just call me Voerman.”

She snickered at the idea. “Don’t think Monroe would like that comparison much.”

“Why?” Ashley gasped and turned to her with a wicked grin. “LaCroix knew the bitch  _ before _ she came out here, didn’t he? And — oh, damn. In Cam circles, it’s almost always Ventrue and Toreador who shack up. I’m impressed. Besides, Monroe let me bite him, so we’re more than halfway there.”

Zari laughed. “I’m sure that ‘let’ involved a wooden stake and a lot of Celerity on your part.”

“Not even.” He threaded a hand through his hair and licked his lips. “Don’t think he’s ever had that done, though. Wobbled a bit, got all awkward and embarrassed. Would be cute if he didn’t curse me out.”

“Wish I had been there.” 

“See?” he said. “You are fun.”

As amused as Ashley seemed about it, Zari couldn’t shake the fact that Monroe had fed him blood twice now. Even if Ashley couldn’t be bonded, that didn’t exactly fill her with confidence. The Ventrue had only been in LA for a couple years. No one knew him well, let alone how he’d function as a baron. Whoever he had been, he also drank down Garcia to the black. That had to have its nasty effects, too.

Ashley read her like a book. “Oh, Mother have mercy,  _ you’re _ worried about  _ me _ .”

“Absolutely not,” she scoffed.

“It’s so sweet, baby.”

“You deaf? I said…” 

As Zari spun to glare, her eyes faded past to the stairs behind him. Jeanette had returned, having found a friend. A beautiful Black woman, in strappy heels and a dress that could’ve been molten gold. Zari almost didn’t recognise her. Aisha had taken the braids out and her hair became a cloud-like afro. Together, her and Jeanette dragged a girl who should not have been let in the club. 

“Oh fuck,” whispered Zari.

“I’m treating her well,” said Ashley defensively. “Gotta feed the growing girl.”

Aisha lost her glittering smile and stared, wide-eyed. 

Jeanette tossed the girl on top of the vessel at their feet. She brushed her hands off, satisfied at her pile, and resettled herself on Ashley’s lap.

“She dead?” asked Zari of the young girl. The music was too loud to hear any heartbeats.

“So what?” asked Aisha, crossing her arms.

“Come here, baby girl,” said Ashley. “Your ma’s just worried about cleaning up the body.”

“Oh.” Aisha relaxed and sat beside Zari. She took her hands and smiled intimately. “No need to worry about me, Mom. Swear. I’m the youngest, so, that ends up being my job. Delilah’s been  _ so _ happy she don’t have to deal with it anymore.” She took her hands and played with her nails. “How long’re you gonna be in Hollywood? We could go get our nails done or—”

“We gotta head back tonight,” said Jeanette, cutting her off and, briefly, sounding terrifyingly like Therese. “Shit ain’t safe for Westsides this far east. Besides,” she added, redoubling her affections on Ashley, “when you gonna come back home, silver swan? Westside’s been so lonely since you stole Amble’s great grandbaby.”

“I don’t share,” said Ashley plainly. Jeanette pouted and whispered in his ear. His hand slipped down her back and he sighed. “Maybe you’re right, but Ventrue are too fun to break for their own damn good.”

Zari did her best to ignore the live sex-and-blood show happening next to her. “So, things are going good?” she asked Aisha loudly.

Aisha laughed, a free and cheerful sound that sent a shiver down Zari’s spine. “Of course!” She gasped and squealed. “I didn’t tell you. I met Usher last week at a party.”

Zari smiled. Hers had been Clint Eastwood. “I bet he loved you.”

She winked and smiled over her shoulder. “Well, duh! You would not  _ believe _ what a party-pooper Ashley is, though. Gotta be so careful around big celebs. Drink, fuck, no blooding, no ghouling, just — gotta baby them, like they ain’t grown ups who can make their own decisions.”

“I bet that sucks,” said Zari soothingly. “But you gotta pass off those bodies for tabloids as murders, and the media circus just ain’t worth the extra pleasure.”

Aisha scoffed. “You think getting to suck Usher dry isn’t worth burying that busybody in a mountain of paperwork? Mom, that’s a perk.”

“Probably is,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in it. Aisha, apparently, didn’t notice or didn’t care. Jeanette gave a particularly shrill moan that made Zari roll her eyes. “Any other news from this side of town?”

“Well, there was that scuffle in Blue,” she said, but she pushed past it hurriedly. “I’m so happy, though. I mean, like, if I had to chose just one place in LA to get stuck in until all these vampire hot-shots finish their fang measuring contest, Hollywood’s really just got it all. The girls and I went down to the Grove to fix everything up for me — hair, nails, clothes — once I moved in for real. And, like, there’s this really cute salon, but apparently its got ties to that ugly fuck, Isaac Abrams, so we ain’t supposed to go there anymore.” Aisha lowered her voice. “But I know where it is, we could still go.” She giggled.

Zari grimaced. “Rewind. What was that about a fight in Blue Moon?”

“Oh,” said Aisha, disinterested. “Some Nosferatu tried to kill someone. Not well. No one got hurt, I think. But, come on. Wouldn’t you rather talk about going on a night out with your favourite girl?” 

Aisha lowered her chin at a particular angle and batted her eyelashes. The movement was dreadfully familiar to Zari, who knew how to do it, had watched Velvet, Blake, Nita, and Delilah pick it up. When licks drank vitae, they tended to pick up ticks.

“How many times you drink from Ashley?” she asked in a voice of forced calm.

“Um.” Aisha screwed up her face. “Two? I think?”

Zari turned back to Ashley. “Hey,” she snapped. “Wanna take your dick and fangs out of her long enough to talk like a real person?”

Ashley, of course, didn’t hear. Zari grabbed him by the silver pelt on his head and ripped it back. The Presence charged up her arm like electricity. It took all she had to not kiss him. Then, he hissed and it got a whole lot easier to resist. Jeanette mewled, disappointed, and adjusted herself to sit on his other side.

“Yes?” asked Ashley mildly. “You want something?”

“My girl, how many times you blood her?” Zari gave the rest of him a disdainful look. “If that number’s higher than one, you’re gonna wanna put the little swan back in before I rip him off.”

Ashley tucked himself away and did up his fly. He wiped a splatter of blood from his collarbone.

“What does it matter?” Aisha weedled. “Mom—”

“Twice,” said Ashley. “I can count. At least to five. And I’m careful. I wouldn’t finish bonding her without your say so  _ and _ her permission.”

“So you plan on bonding her?” asked Zari, distraught. “You didn’t bond me.”

Ashley’s buzz mellowed and he only looked at her. “You didn’t let me. Neither did VV. When it’s not right, you know it.”

“Toreadors know all matters of the heart,” said Jeanette. Ashley’s blood tainted her lips. She stroked his chest and continued to mutter to herself.

“Ignore her,” he said crisply. “Aisha, girl, why don’t you tell your ma how you feel about staying with us? You wanna leave, sweet thing?”

Aisha blinked, like the question was too stupid to answer. “Wait, you serious? I mean, why’d I wanna leave? You guys, you look after me. I’m a hell of a lot happier here than I ever was, even as a human. I… I love you guys.”

“Give her ten years,” said Zari in a hoarse voice. “Just, ten years to process the Presence and the blood.”

Ashley raised an eyebrow. “Should I give her twenty-seven? Hell, maybe fourty.”

“That’s not fair,” she said. “Don’t you throw me and Velvet into this. It’s different. She still got things to do, outside of you—”

“Mom.” Aisha’s hand clawed over hers again. Nails dug runs. Fear marred her broad, innocent face. She was over thirty, but Zari saw again the girl she had been forced to leave behind three decades ago. The kid who was scared that if you spoke truth it made it real. “I don’t got anything.”

Zari swallowed. Ashley — and definitely Jeanette — didn’t need to know about Noel, about Aisha’s brother and Zari’s son who faced death from a lingering sickness. Unfinished business. Aisha wanted to close the door, leave it unfinished. Who was Zari to say otherwise? But was that Aisha? Maybe it was just a combo of too much partying, drugs, Presence, and Ashley’s blood in her. Maybe it would pass like a bad hangover and her not being there for Noel at his end would haunt her for eternity. Maybe as a mother Zari owed it to her, to make the decision for her.

But Zari hadn’t been a mother in such a long time. She had no right to start now.

She pulled Aisha into a close hug. Surprised, she returned it fiercely.

Zari whispered into her ear, “I’m always here for you. Whatever you need. Whatever you drink, whoever you attach yourself to, I’m still your mom.”

Aisha nodded and sniffled. Her grip tightened.

“DeDe,” called Ashley. The red haired girl pulled herself away from her fawning vessels and leaned over the back of their couch. Ashley petted her fondly. “Families can be rough.”

Delilah gasped and spotted the tight hug. A delicate hand reached out and rubbed their shoulders, first Zari, then Aisha, where her hand lingered. “Oh my God, guys. I’m so sorry! What can I do? I got a couple cute boys. They still got some juice in them, too.” Her Presence wasn’t as gentle as Ashley’s, but it was just as impossible to escape. Cajoling, sweet, earnest, and cheerful.

Aisha pulled away with a rattling breath. Zari stroked her brow and watched the tension and stress and grief wash from her face. She stood, pulling down her dress as it rode up, and accepted Delilah’s sisterly hug.

“I think I should go,” said Zari wearily. She spoke to Ashley, who nodded shortly, but it was Delilah who answered.

“You sure?” Her frown could’ve wrung tears from a stone. “I don’t wanna let you go all sad. Not good to put those energies out in the world, when there’s so much good in it.”

“We all deal in our own way, honey,” said Ashley. Zari didn’t know if he spoke to her or Delilah.

Delilah groaned and draped herself over the couch. “I don’t get it. It’s not dealing, just, like,  _ mulling _ . Dwelling. Wallowing.”

“Wallowing,” said Jeanette with a blissful smile. “Wallowing like a pig in mud, a vampire in blood, a…”

“You have a safe way back to Westside?” asked Ashley.

Zari managed a chuckle. “You keeping Jeanette?”

He smiled. “It’s just rude to send her away without letting her finish after you so rudely pulled her off.”

“Right,” she said sarcastically, “because you’re so kind and considerate.”

Ashley gave Delilah a goodbye kiss and she retreated back to her toys. Her and Nita shared the three naked guys. Already, they looked pale and weak. Three more to add to the pile. At least they looked well-treated.

Zari couldn’t watch.

“Black Rose,” called Jeanette. Her voice strengthened as she sat up. “If you’re heading back, do me a favour, huh? Therese’s been a bitch lately — more than usual. Growling and pissing to mark her turf. Slash up her precious little Gallery Noir.”

Zari shook her head. “Darsh is using it as elysium tomorrow.”

“ _ Exactly _ !” She shimmied her shoulders and her breasts, already exposed, wiggled fiercely. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

Ashley snorted. “Well, I don’t know about you, Zari, but I’m sold.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Which would be exactly nothing. Therese already owed her. And Zari cared far more about being on Therese’s good side than on Jeanette’s. After Zari made her way out into the street and called a cab, she found Therese’s number. It went straight to voicemail.

“It’s Zari,” she said. “There’s a… family matter I want to talk to you about. It’s urgent.”

Therese didn’t call her back until the cab was halfway back to Westside. 

“What is it?” she asked, venom in her voice. “What has my half-wit harlot of a sister done now?”

Zari sighed. Perhaps she shouldn’t get Jeanette in trouble. She told Therese her plans regardless. “I understand you and your sister have a strained relationship,” she said, “but—”

Therese choked a laugh. “Caine and Abel had a strained relationship! What Jeanette and I share is a pure, unadulterated, God-given curse. Not only must I have suffered her existence for twenty-six breathing years, but now for the rest of eternity.”

Zari sighed. “She’s harmless—”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, dear me, no. Don’t infantilize Jeanette. She may play the clown, but she is a clever and vindictive slut. Do not be deceived. She would’ve humiliated me in front of all of the realm! Once you are perceived as weak, you already are.”

“Perhaps you should talk with her,” said Zari sensibly. “She said something about you being possessive, marking your territory? Settling this could prevent further attacks.”

Therese fell eerily silent. “I — Well, perhaps — I could have acted with more decorum. Thank you, Miss Herald. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. And.” She hesitated. “Thank you for accompanying my sister. She needs more good influences in her life.”

The line went dead before Zari could answer.

She leaned against the window and rubbed her forehead. She felt herself growing wrinkles. How was that even possible?

“Family troubles?” asked the cab driver in a thick Middle Eastern accent. His lifelessly dull brown skin and the silence of the cab gave him away.

“None of your business,” she snapped.

He smiled in the rearview mirror. Sunglasses blocked his eyes. “We are all of the same Blood. It seems Los Angeles is nothing  _ but _ family troubles.”

Then, Zari remembered Camarilla sometimes called each other “cousins”, especially among the same clan.

“Keep your head down,” she advised. “Everyone’s saying it’s gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.”

“And what of you, Zari?” he asked. “Where do you want to go?”

“I gave you the address,” she said cautiously. The air quivered in a way she didn’t like. It held something. She resolved not to call taxis anymore. Not until this had all found its conclusion.

“You need to decide where you want to be taken,” said the driver again.

Filled with an irrational fear, Zari repeated her apartment’s address again. “Just get me there,” she said. Her teeth chattered and she slammed her jaw shut.

The cab driver said nothing else until the car slid smoothly to a stop. She threw him all the cash in her wallet and slammed the door, opening the door to the building in a flash. Fast. Faster than human eyes or voices could follow.

As she burst into the hallway, Mercurio blinked owlishly at her. He had his key in his front door, packages under his arms, and a hanger of drycleaning in his mouth. He mumbled a greeting. She reached for LaCroix’s drycleaning and pulled it out. He licked his lips.

“Long night, miss?” he asked. He managed the door open and took the drycleaning back. “Thanks very much.”

She nodded and reached for her own keys. “Long… Long couple of weeks.”

Mercurio left the door to his apartment open and dropped his packages inside. He had had a long night, too. It was all over his face, his shoulders. The brisk night had him wear a jacket over his trademarked paisley shirt and gold chains. The remains of rain darkened his hair and he had a day or two of stubble over a chin that could’ve been used to chop wood.

His ears reddened as he noticed her watching him. “Do… uh — Do you want a drink or…?”

Zari’s hand lingered on her own apartment. Suddenly, she found she didn’t want to be alone. She nodded and he followed her into hers.

“I might not be great company,” she admitted.

“That’s alright,” he said. “I’m a good talker. Better listener, if you want it.”

Zari reached into her fridge. There was nothing but condiments, dry goods, and alcohol in the kitchen. Nothing that could rot. It made the kitchen a little less empty, though. She offered Mercurio one of Rubio’s beers and took one for herself. The Christmas present, so unexpected and awkward from the snake, made her wince. There were no more now. 

Mercuio gave the homemade label a funny look. “Cheers.”

They clinked and retired to the living room. It was too quiet, but too loud in her head. Things were moving too fast. Always. Always, Ashley moved too fast for her. She sprinted, struggling to keep up with his Tilt-a-Whirl of a life. She thought she had got out of it, three years ago with Monroe. Three years. Was that all she was allowed?

Mercurio made good silence. He had that sort of presence. A humble face, kind eyes, a ghoul’s slow heartbeat that kicked up whenever he thought of blood or they met eyes accidentally. It was almost sweet.

“I come from New York,” he said, like it was something people didn’t find out within two seconds of him opening his mouth.

“Really?” she drawled with a smirk.

Mercurio blushed again, up to his ears. “Yeah. Born and raised in the city, long time ago. My daddy was a made man, uncles, too. Grew up in the Bronx, learning how to cook books like Julia Child. Met my first of your types as a teen. See, I’m told all the old families of Cosa Nostra, back home in Sicily, are all necromancers. Undead.” He laughed. “My first girlfriend, fine girl, she was one of them and I never knew it.”

“She ghouled you?” asked Zari, interested in spite of herself.

“Oh, yeah. Got my first taste of kindred politics bullshit short after — when they all went to war. Later on learned it was the Sabbat. She died, and not in a good way. LaCroix breezed into town few weeks later. He must’ve scouted me out, because the next thing I know he just — appears, in this sketchy bar in Queens, asking questions. Twenty minutes later, we go out for a smoke and that’s that.”

She drank, and wondered if other ghouls talked like this, the first time they met their regents. For most of them, she figured, it was one endless nightmare. Mercurio had a good setup, though. Already grew up around crime, honour, murder. He made a good fit. Poor guy. Most of Zari’s pity was reserved for herself, though.

“Manhattan’s always been Cam turf,” continued Mercurio. “Him and I stayed. He tried to build a name, moved onto different cities, but we always got back home some way. He tells me the War of the Eastern Seaboard should’ve opened up opportunity, but I think he took that back, because it doesn’t look like we’re anywhere near the eastern seaboard.” He laughed nervously. “Um. Miss Herald, sorry. Should I just be quiet?”

“No,” she said, more to herself. “Just. Keep talking.”

That was an order he liked, at least. Mercurio could talk forever. He had a big family back east, a whole houseful of sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles. The family drama sounded almost like vampire politics. Marriages and divorces and side-jabs and snubs at Catholic mass. On and on, about jobs done at racetracks and shakedowns for debts, about bookies and Fat Tommy and hitmen who couldn’t hit the Statue of Liberty if they were standing on the torch.

Mercurio finished his drink. “So, last night, a minute before dawn, big man left me an email to gets done. Now, I don’t keep a dayjob. I get to sleep most of the sun-up hours. Wake up at four-thirty, find this email and realise I need to get all this done in the next half hour before sundown. I run around, I swear, like a chicken with a firecracker up it, and I get on up to his tower and the big man goes, ‘Good job but, uh, Mercurio, what’s all this for?’ I says it’s my day’s work. He’s all confused but thankful. Even gave me a taste. I reread the email and, oh, look at that. It doesn’t say by 1/28, it says by  _ 2 _ /28. So, I’m a month ahead and got even more stuff to store in my place. Feels like I’m living in a warehouse at this point.”

Zari laughed with him. Emboldened, Mercurio reaches an arm over the back of the couch.

“So,” he asked, “what’s got your night so long?”

Zari’s smile fell off like he slapped it. “Nothing.”

“No. Swear. I’m here to help. You could say that’s my Devil-given purpose. I—”

“I think you’re overstepping your lines a little bit there,” she said coolly. “I got my life. And I don’t need any simpering ghoul to listen to me bitch.”

“Oh.” The smile slipped off his face like it was oiled. Mercurio nodded, blushing, and set his empty bottle down. “That’s alright. I — Actually, I remember that the big man asked me to go and… do stuff. Somewhere else. Around now, ish.”

He stood up, rubbing his nose, and headed for the door. The apartment already felt too quiet, too empty.

“Wait,” said Zari after him. When he turned back, there was such earnest hope in his eyes. It wasn’t the broken spirit of a ghoul, which she knew so well, but a man who only wanted to help. The Blood didn’t do that. He wasn’t even her ghoul. She offered a small smile and summoned her most haughty, Camarilla voice. “I can’t have a servant leave while my nails are such a travesty.”

Mercurio took her hand to inspect. His touch was warm, like plunging them into a bath. “I think they look fine, miss,” he said, not once taking his eyes off her face. “But, as you say.”

Zari directed him to the acetone and cotton in the bathroom. She showed him how to scrub off the last traces of polish. There was no use pushing cuticles or filing away, as they would only regrow in the day. She handed him the nail polish bottle on the table.

“Pomegranate Rose,” he read. “Looks like it’ll look real good for a pretty rose such as yourself.”

It had been a long time, perhaps thirty years, since she had been touched so harmlessly by a friend. Not by the Swans or Ashley in their private world. Not by any ghoul or vessel coerced by the Kiss or Presence. Never by Monroe. Even Aisha’s hug had been tainted.

Mercurio was warm, and gentle, and thorough. Even with the insipid degrading task, he was terribly careful. He rarely looked at her, though every glance was stolen. As he worked, he was silent as the grave.

The colour was the furthest thing from blood, or any such tone of red. There was purple. But not any purple like Ashley. It was deep, dark, but not gothic. It stained like wine, a merlot purple-red that complimented her skin tone. It brought out what precious warmth she had left to her skin. 

Zari was not blind, not to the mirror and not to compliments. Persuaded by Presence and the promise of blood, any number of things could come from human lips. Exotic. Sexy. Gorgeous. Seductive. Tempting. A devastating goddess. Never pretty. She looked again at the mixed tape, at the flower pots that appeared on her doorstep. The first one had appeared on her third night, without a card, almost like a formality. The pieces clicked.

Mercurio stole another glance at her. When he caught her gaze, he couldn’t turn away. His eyes were a dull blue-grey, his nose broken at least once, mouse brown hair hair neither short nor long but caught eternally in its half-way growing out stage. He turned as pink as his shirt, his heart fluttering like a rabbit.

“It’s a pretty colour,” she said softly.

“Thanks,” he said. “I mean, it is. I don’t have anything to do with this sorta stuff. Ain’t mine.”

Zari’s smile warbled. She wanted to take him, reblood him, drag him to bed and drink to black, but she could wait. She could play his game. It was even sweet.


	25. Clippers

Charlie never thought she would be so happy to not see Jesse downstairs when she came down for Friday night D&D. They had barely said ten words to each other since Griffith Park. The next night, Jesse had tried to apologize for crying. Not for what she said. Charlie accepted it with a weak shrug. That had been almost a week ago. Even Jesse knew some things weren’t fixed with apologies. Charlie forgave her. This sulking didn’t help put it behind them. Every couple fought. Vampires probably worse than any others.

Didn’t stop her from being happy when Jesse didn’t turn up.

Worst part was that Charlie could tell she wasn’t the only one there who was happy. Rhys got to use the spare chair as a footstool. Everything went smoother. Combat slicked by without Jesse taking the dice’s uncooperation too personally. Roleplaying ate up more time. Oreo even behaved better, moving from lap to lap rather than upsetting their table. Before long, Charlie forgot all about the cloud that suffocated her.

Music pumped in from upstairs, the Deathsingers. Jeff managed to play bass well enough to let Midnight play D&D. Beer flowed. Alice pulled up her chair closer and, as the night wore on, Copper tried to slip her a drunken tip. The five-dollar bill hit the floor.

Orion howled as he picked it up. “Slick moves, Casanova.” He flicked it over to Alice, who smiled awkwardly. “She got a man already. Man with a business capital and real fangs, man who don’t spend his nights playing nerd games.”

Copper snarled. “It’s not—”

“Not what? This phone number on it not yours?”

Copper turned beet red and stammered.

“You play nerd games, too, babe,” said Midnight. She glared daggers at Orion.

“Leave him alone,” said Charlie with a groan of exasperation. “Come on, dude.”

“Yeah. Don’t pick on the thinnies,” said Rhys. He gathered a worryingly large fistful of dice to roll behind his screen. “Interesting.”

“ _ Thinnies _ ?” repeated Copper, outraged.

“What’s happening?” asked Charlie, standing to see Rhys.

Rhys hovered protectively over his notes and bared his fangs.

Oreo dove off Charlie’s lap and fled for a corner of the room. Charlie took another look at the group, Midnight’s ignored frustration, Copper’s indignant drunken rage, Orion’s smarmy smirk. The clock.

“Think we’re done for the night,” said Charlie in a different voice.

Rhys nodded shortly. “Understood, kid.”

“Monroe’s got me somewhere to be later,” she explained. “Couldn’t stay much longer anyway.”

Copper snatched his dice and papers off the table, staggering off. In lieu of slamming a door, he knocked over an empty chair and kicked the elevator on his way. A wince said he only managed to hurt himself.

“Sorry about Copper,” Charlie said to Alice. “Some men, when they drink—”

She raised a hand. “I’ve been bartending, up and down, for the last ten years. Not much I haven’t seen from a drunk man.” She showed the bill with an indulgent smile. “It was almost cute.”

“Heard you and everyone’s favourite snake—” started Orion.

Alice stood up gracefully. “I don’t entertain gossip.”

“You’re a bartender,” he hollered after her.

“Sure am,” she said back as she returned behind the bar with a book. “You should’ve come around Silver Lake when I was still breathing. Could’ve told you all sorts. If we can’t change our outsides, might as well change our insides.”

“What was that roll for?” asked Midnight with a raised razor eyebrow.

Rhys smirked and sat back. “What makes you think I’m telling you?”

“You  _ devil _ —”

“Vampire,” he corrected with fangs.

Charlie’s mind was left behind, though, on Alice’s words. She sighed and stretched, wishing she could get her joints to crack. “Man, if I had known I’d be stuck like  _ this _ for eternity, there’d be shit I’d do, you know?”

Orion nodded cagily. “I hear you, girl.”

She grabbed her ponytail. She had been overdue for a haircut when Rhys had turned her. “I mean, I’m stuck looking like I skinned a squirrel the size of Big Bird, you know? Meant to chop it all off. Hell, shave it. And, you wouldn’t know it, but I was big into outdoor sports in high school. Hiking, surfing. I would’ve hit the weights and cut down if I— You okay, dude?”

Orion had crossed his arms and slunk uncomfortably low in his chair. “Yeah. Sure,” he muttered. “I just…” He shook his head. “Go say that to Ashley.”

Charlie laughed. “Say what? Bitch that I didn’t cut my hair?”

Orion gnawed on his lower lip and nodded. Somehow, the last minute had evaporated a fun couple hours of drinking. “Yeah. I owe him. Tell him I sent you and me and him are square. Just, do it for me, Charlie.”

His seriousness disturbed her. “What’d he do for you?” she asked, scared of the answer.

He shrugged. “He can tell you. I’m not in the mood for storytime.” He coughed and sat up properly. “If that’s all you really want, he can chop off that squirrel tail.”

Charlie was about to argue that  _ she _ had already tried that. It just grew back in the day. Something in Orion’s eyes told her to drop it. Fast. Confused, she did.

The conversation drifted and, as Midnight felt her boyfriend’s sour mood, took him upstairs to watch the rest of the performance. Charlie bid Rhys a goodbye and headed out into the street. It didn’t matter anyways. It wasn’t like she had any way to get in contact with Ashley Swan, even if she wanted to. Even having that number would taint her phone.

The night was quiet, brisk, and bright. An oppressive weight of navy blue sky felt like it hung too low, like something watched from above. Charlie scanned the rooftops, the stars, and found nothing. She almost reached across the Cobweb. Rhys’ familiar presence was on the end of it, like he held the other part of a tin can telephone. She needed only to jerk the red string. Darkness closed in. Darkness.

_ Shadows _ .

Charlie fell invisible, suddenly terrified. Shouldn’t be scared. No reason. Jesse wouldn’t hurt her. They just got in a bad fight. Anyway,  _ Jesse _ was the one being juvenile about this. There was nothing to be mad about. Nothing to be scared of. The shadows lengthened, wailing like ghosts, peeling into three-dimensional smoke creatures of talons and tails and wings.

Nothing—

Charlie slunk against the back wall of Blue Moon. The rough cement and asphalt scraped her back to awareness. Reminded her what was real. The Professor had told her nothing really fixed the Cobweb. Rhys said the same. Damn if things didn’t help, though. Blood. Lots of it. Drinking until it got thick and black like tar, like a salve over the cracks in the mirror of her mind.

Cars came and went. Mostly came. Licks were easy to see. They rode motorcycles without helmets, fancy cars clearly stolen or bought illegally. Some wore fangs, clear as the moon.

Something —  _ something _ — watched them from above. Disapprovingly. Something was angry. Like a parent. Scolding a toddler for spilling milk. Spilling blood. A father.

Monroe. That was it. She was worried. This was his place. His security cameras. She shouldn’t have gone invisible in the middle of everything. And she was just worried about letting him down. Big night. She needed to find enough of herself to pull herself back together.

Minutes ticked longer. She should get a watch. It was too easy to let time go by. Charlie recognised one of the cars that drove up and groaned. Bluejay blue sports car, low and sleek, with a black roof. Ashley stepped out. Alone. He leaned against the back of the car, scanning the lot until his eyes found her. Ants crawled in her veins. He walked directly up to her and crouched until they were eye-level. He passed a hand through his hair as he thought.

“How can you do that?” she whispered. “What—”

“Auspex,” he said calmly. He raised a hand. “Fifteen decades beats fifteen weeks.”

“I hate that,” she muttered. “When people talk about a newborn baby, like, seventeen months, twenty-seven weeks. Fuck that.”

He smirked. “Now, you’re the baby, baby.”

Charlie glared. Every inch of her wanted to hit that little inflection in his voice, that taunting lilt. “Not  _ your _ baby.”

Ashley grew serious and, with a grumble, sat on the hard ground next to her. For the first time she could remember, there was no Presence. “Orion called,” he said. “Said you showed… a familiar sort of interest.” He tongued a fang and took a deep breath. “I want to make something clear, right now. Think what you want of me outside, but for the rest of the night, I swear on my ma’s grave you can trust me.”

“Outside?” she asked.

“Outside tonight.”

“What’s so special about tonight? All I said to Orion was that I wanted a haircut.”

Ashley wouldn’t look at her. Minutes slipped by. Charlie took a certain wry pleasure in how ridiculous and pathetic he looked, sitting on the ground by the dumpsters out back of the club, scratching up his leather pants.

“No matter what we think of each other,” said Ashley at last, “we tend to find each other. Always. From all walks of life, all clans, all—”

“The fuck are you going on about?” she demanded.

He smiled dryly. “Orion’s sire brought him to me. Some other gay brought him to me—”

“Orion’s not gay,” said Charlie, taken aback. “He’s with Midnight.”

Ashley shook his head like she was an idiot. “Orion didn’t come out of his momma with that dick and flat chest. That was  _ me _ . Found my own childer the same way. When I came to LA, it was hell getting Orsay to help me. Three nights —  _ three _ — of pure agony. Weeks more to make it take. And she worked me into a debt for it.”

“Oh.” Charlie looked at Ashley again. “ _ Oh. _ ” And she realised what Orion must’ve thought about her. “Oh, shit.”

His smile twitched into a smirk. And he blinked. Again and again. His purple eyes shifted. Green. Blue. Black. Purple. “Getting Orsay to teach me landed me in worse debt. But it’s worth it.” He sighed and stood. “I’ve seen you with that Lasombra truck. Even if you want to keep the rest of you, you’re one of us. Whatever you want with this—” he gestured up and down her body “—it’s free. Only thing I ask is that when you find someone new, you send them to me.”

Ashley extended a hand down. “Whatever happens with Monroe, or with the city, you can trust me with this.”

“All I wanted was a haircut,” said Charlie weakly, shrinking away.

He laughed and pulled her to her feet before she could take his hand. Part of her wanted to call Monroe, to run and hide, from Ashley and his words.

“Fuck it,” she muttered, and she slammed the door as she rode shotgun. “You know Monroe’s gonna kill you if you hurt a hair on my head.”

Ashley didn’t even flinch. “Figured that was sort of the point of all this. Hurt your hairs.”

He drove in silence. Her fingers tied knots in her lap as the streets flew by. He didn’t even get on the highway. Charlie was scared he was driving her to some mansion in the hills, or a ditch. He pulled into a by-the-hour motel in Los Feliz. It looked like it hadn’t had customers aside from hookers and serial killers since the sixties.

Charlie calmed herself and eased the blood into her fingers. The nails darkened and thickened like claws. She had an out. She left them short, but at the ready.

Ashley didn’t bother going up to the office. He just pulled open a unit that looked dark and empty. The lock broke but a place like this didn’t have security. He took off his jacket and his shirtlessness made Charlie anxious. There was something too casual, too familiar about his actions. She didn’t like being the only one afraid.

What was she afraid of, anyways? That Ashley was stupider than he looked and would kill her? He knew where the lines were, he just enjoyed tormenting people. More, maybe, she was scared she would leave with more than a haircut. And that she would want to.

“Wanna shut the door?” he asked with a small smile, like they were old friends.

Charlie did. The motel room was as barren and lifeless as she expected. Vampires made the cockroaches scatter. Suddenly, a glass shattered against a cluster of them. Shrapnel and bug parts splattered. She screamed.

Ashley seemed to just vanish, appearing in the kitchen, in front of an open cupboard, with another drinking glass in his hands. The speed made her dizzy. “Unless you  _ want _ to have an insectoid audience,” he dared.

“I think this was a mistake,” she said hurriedly.

“Even if it’s nothing, all you’ve wasted is time,” he said in a much different voice. “And being a vampire is just about finding more creative ways to waste it.” He shut the cupboard. “If you want some privacy, I saw some clippers in the bathroom when I was looking for ammo.” He took aim. 

Charlie braced her arms, but Ashley waited until she was out of the firing line. “You really shouldn’t be trashing a motel room. Especially since you didn’t pay for it.”

Ashley snorted. “Fine. Call LAPD on me.”

She grimaced and pushed into the bathroom. The drawers had been pulled open, the medicine cabinet hung on a crooked hinge. He was right. There were clippers. No scissors. Charlie pulled the scrunchie from her hair. Why was she shaking? She had done this before. When she figured out she couldn’t just cut off the ponytail, she tried shaving her head. It lasted until dawn. Dawn was long enough for her to be sad when it grew back. A weird hollow wrong sad that echoed in her bones. She had gotten rid of the mirror in her bedroom and slept with her slovenly curly hair in a bush of a ponytail. There was nothing  _ wrong _ with long hair. She’d had long hair most of her life.

Another glass shattered against the wall.

The crash snapped her out of her reverie. 

The clipper sounded like a swarm of bees. Wild, dangerous, but only because people said so. Bees weren’t a threat. And neither were clippers. It was only hair. They fell into the sink in curls and tufts, bent crooked, thick and dark. Thicker portions jammed it up, making her curse and pull them out. 

It wasn’t only hair.

Charlie didn’t look back in the mirror. She felt it. Hands worming over her head, less than a half inch of dark soft fuzz bracing her against the breeze. Naked. Her neck felt exposed. Even alone, locked in a strange bathroom, she felt stares. The weight off her shoulders was so much more than hair.

The Cobweb didn’t have anything to say. First time in a while.

Charlie risked raising her eyes to the reflection. The military buzz made the rest of her feel sharper. Older. Like she could handle shit. Her eyes didn’t seem so hollow. Her head was even a nice shape, no weird bulge or curves.

Charlie didn’t often think she looked like a lesbian. Maybe she wore too much denim, but she owned makeup. She had long hair. Sometimes, she even painted her nails. But her reflection hit different, the curve of her breasts and hips saying  _ woman _ in spite of the buzz. No straight girl would shave her hair off unless she had to. Men didn’t like it. She didn’t have to worry about what men wanted. 

If she had to choose between the bush half-way down her back and this, she would chose it a million times. But there were so many in betweens.

The more Charlie thought, the sadder her eyes grew. Small and brown and hollow. Bella wouldn’t recognise her. Neither would Dustin. Neither would her mom. Charlie would never see any of them again, but it still made her stop. It hurt, to step outside of the girl who lived in Dustin’s memories, to know her mother would disapprove. 

Charlie’s coming out had been brief, at sixteen, and no real threat. There had been no girlfriend. No threat of wearing plaid and Home Depot and cutting her hair. She promised to be normal. Mom had entertained it like she had entertained all of Charlie’s phases. 

What would she have thought? Nothing good.

And yet.

Charlie could see the woman she had always been growing up to be in the mirror. Scared and sad and lonely. She wondered if she’d ever be brave enough to meet her.

A glass shattered against the bathroom door. The sound echoed. She jumped but didn’t scream.

“How you doing in there, childe?” asked Ashley. He knocked. “I can just leave, if you want to wait the day and pretend—”

Charlie pushed open the door. He stood on the other side, still shirtless, tall and silvery pale in skin and hair.

“Make it grow, bit more,” she said coarsely. “And don’t make it look like shit.”

In another blink, too fast, Ashley pulled a kitchen chair to the middle of the room. She shrugged out of her jacket, feeling exposed. Exposed for what? Cockroaches? Ashley was just another cockroach. The floor and walls were plastered with their remains. Broken glass reflected shady lamp light like diamonds.

Ashley put his hands on her shoulders from behind and she tensed. He brushed loose hair off the back of her neck. “Hair’s probably the easiest,” he said. “Still, it’ll probably still hurt a bit. This work, it’s way too hard for me to think of it in any way sexual. But I’ll need to touch you.”

She jerked a shrug. His hands slid up the alien curve along her neck, into her head. Ants crawled and roaches bit where his fingers touched. His nails felt like screws. Wasn’t nice. Didn’t hurt. His words didn’t particularly reassure her.

“So,” she said. “Did Orion just want a haircut?”

Ashley smirked. “Orion came with schematics and a dildo.”

She didn’t want to give away how much that relieved her. She laughed. “Sounds like Orion.”

“Do you want a different colour?” he asked. “Much the same or do you want it to look like you know what shampoo is?”

“I shower,” she snapped. His hands fell to her shoulders again. The feeling abated. “Just, don’t use that leave-in conditioner stuff.”

He continued. “How about halfway between dumpster imp and runway model?”

Charlie didn’t give him an answer. “I’m no dumpster imp,” she grumbled. “Don’t make me look anything like you — or your childer. If you made Orion look normal, why’d you do this to yourself?”

She expected some retribution on her poor aching head, but none came. “I don’t like being invisible,” he said quietly. “I like people looking at me and knowing I’m not like them. They had been doing that for, oh, over a hundred years before I met Orsay. It felt wrong when she left me looking like any man off the street. Better. But not me.”

She hated that answer. She hated how she understood it. She slid her hands against her thighs. “So. You were a woman.”

Ashley’s hands stopped. Five fingers on each side of her head, cradling it, threading through an inch of growth. “I could turn your head to pudding right now,” he said, sounding a lot more like his old self. “Are you sure that’s how you want to play this?”

Charlie smiled at her hands.

Ashley stepped around and crouched down in front of her. He measured the length between his fingers. He didn’t look at her.

“I… I thought I was a lesbian, actually,” he said in a low voice. “Before I learned I didn’t care any. I had a girl, a damn fine woman. I didn’t deserve her, not even then. I was too young to know how to love her. When we moved to Atlanta, away from our families, I did what I could. At the time, a low hat, short hair, and suits were enough to get sir’d and mister’d.”

The more he talked, the more Charlie couldn’t take her eyes off of him. Ashley’s voice broke from its usual tones and his vowels got longer, twangier. Like her own mirror, he started to become someone more recognisable, but not anyone she liked.

“What happened?” she asked.

Ashley’s eyes tightened, but he still didn’t look at her. “I was Embraced. By a Toreador. She… She thought I was pretty.”

The pain and hatred in his words made her want to reach out. She knotted her hands together. 

“You are pretty,” said Charlie, but she couldn’t make it an insult. He was what he made himself. For that, if nothing else, she was jealous.

He didn’t hear her. He was off in his own little world. “Toreadors like to collect. Like, those people who put butterflies in window boxes. I stayed with my woman as long as I could, even when her daddy dragged her home by her hair and had her married to a  _ real _ man.”

“Did she have a good life, at least?” she asked. “Did you get to watch over her?”

Ashley didn’t answer. His silence made her ashamed for asking. Not ashamed enough to apologize. Not to him. But enough. Too much.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

Charlie could feel his fingers pull longer hair. Maybe two inches. It began to tickle her bare neck.

“Orion said you were wanting to change your build,” said Ashley gruffly. He stood and ruffled her hair again and stood, inspecting it from all angles. “How much? Will warn you, it’ll take some weeks to keep up. Might need to do touch ups now and again.”

“I don’t feel like a man trapped in a woman’s body,” said Charlie, wounded. The words didn’t taste wrong coming out. But they didn’t taste right either. “I just feel trapped.”

He sighed, a sad sound. “Some of that’s the fangs, sweetheart. Not all, but some.” He rested his hands on her shoulders. “Not all of life’s got a rewind button, but this does.”

Charlie wiped her face. There should’ve been tears. If she had been human, there would’ve been tears. Instead, it was smooth, cool, unflushed. “Not tonight,” she muttered, shaking her head. She reached for her jacket and shrugged off his hands. “Not tonight.”

“You were a good kid, weren’t you?,” said Ashley with a sniff. He sounded a lot more like his old self and she took it as a bandaid. “Honest, always home before curfew, never grounded, never shook the boat, never talked back, solid B+ student. Am I right?”

“Don’t make it sound like a bad thing,” she said, offended.

“There’s no such thing as good vampires,” he said sincerely. “Only honest ones. So, you might as well be honest about who you want to be, what makes you happy, and start living.”

Charlie scoffed. “That’s actually not half bad advice.” He reached out and she stepped backwards. “If you wanna touch me again, you put on a shirt or something.”

Ashley laughed. It didn’t sound mean. “You think I put up with the fiend’s torture, just to wear shirts again?” But he put on his blazer again and buttoned it. “Can I get a hug, now?”

“Of course you’re a hugger,” she said, disgusted.

Charlie gave him a hug. It wasn’t as bad as she thought. Something shared between them made her hug him back.

“Love is scary,” said Ashley, his voice rough against her head. “Especially our sort. It can go against a lifetime of bad teachings, challenge our self esteem, our place in the world. It can put us in danger. Sometimes, for that reason, the cost is too high. Stolen moments alone aren’t worth it. But love is never supposed to scare you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, stepping away before he found too much of the Ashley she was starting to know.

“I mean Orion isn’t as stupid as he looks.”

Charlie felt a need to defend herself, but she couldn’t say why. “Jesse and I—”

Ashley raised a hand. “You want good advice? Leave her. I can introduce you to a better woman.”

“I’m not leaving my girlfriend because  _ you _ tell me to,” snapped Charlie.

Ashley rolled his eyes and jammed his hands in his pockets. Like that, the night between them ended. Nothing had changed. And everything had.

“There are what — three hundred? — licks in LA,” he said. “How many are gay? How many are gay women? I know the odds are long. Don’t use the odds to stay with someone who doesn’t deserve you.”

Charlie fumed. The stinking roach motel seemed to tremble. He had done a good thing, but that didn’t give him any sorta right to butt into her life. It didn’t stop him from being Ashley.

“Look—” she spat. She pointed a finger.

Ashley pinched the finger and wiggled it. “I’m not gonna argue,” he said. “I know when I’m right. I’ve been around.”

She didn’t want to argue.

“What was  _ her  _ name?” she asked meanly.

Ashley sighed and let himself be hurt by it for a minute. The Cobweb shimmered and shook in the air. “That’s fine,” he said bitterly. “I got you, sweetheart. It was Ashleigh Swan.” He spelled it. “I could never settle on a new name, so she always just called me Mr Swan. When she was murdered, I knew I had to have her name, masculine. I’m patient. And I got nothing but time.”

“How romantic,” she drawled.

“I think it is.” He made an attempt to smile. “Do you have a suit for tonight? Do you have a tie? Can you  _ tie _ a tie?”

“Yes,” she spat. 

He grinned and spread his arms. “Wanna hit me before you head?”

Charlie pulled her jacket closer and stormed out to the sound of Ashley laughing. She didn’t need his help. And he knew it. He gave her an out. One last good deed before he went back to being him. If her hair was fucked up, she could always take him up on that offer.

Oreo greeted her with aggressive meowing as she returned to her room in Blue Moon. He crawled up her jeans, screaming all the while, until she petted him and dropped him back on the bed. At least she had someone who didn’t care about if her hair was fucked up, if she was a vampire, a lesbian, or wore too much denim.

It wasn’t fucked up. Part of her wished it was. It was a lingering reminder that Ashley wasn’t the angel of demons the Cobweb had warned her about. At least not as bad. Maybe. She was still a brunette. But the curls weren’t frizzy, they bound together. There was no real shape, no definition to the hairstyle. More men’s than women’s. More her than not. It felt like there was magic in it, more than whatever Discipline Ashley used.

Charlie gave it a ruffle and it changed shape again. She  _ did _ have a suit. Black. White dress shirt, black bowtie. She thought about a long tie, but didn’t like how it lay over her breasts.

Someone knocked on her bedroom door as she was wrestling with the bowtie. Monroe. It was already ten. Fuck. 

“Are you decent?” he called.

Charlie ran for the door. “Why you gotta do that? Talk like some Elizabethan Jane Austen character? Get with the twenty-first century, man. Also, did you tell Ashley about the elysium tonight? You didn’t say it was a secret, but I sorta figured. No Anarch really should know about us heading to see the Valley Prince. Looking good, by the way. I know you said ‘black tie’, but I heard that black tie events actually want  _ white _ ties.”

Once she got a look at Monroe’s face, she couldn’t shut up. It would’ve been funny to see him so stunned speechless, but it left her cold. He didn’t look at her. He looked at the hair.

“You talked to Ashley?” he said distantly.

“Yeah, he mentioned—”

“What did he charge?” demanded Monroe. He turned back and braced his hands against his head. “ _ Fuck _ ,” he grunted with such venom that Charlie stared. “ _ Fuck _ him. I — He knew I would take your debt on, too, the bastard. Of course, of  _ course _ childer are part of this game, but—”

“He didn’t charge anything,” she said, laying a hand on his arm. “Maybe I should’ve tipped him.”

“Nothing?” he repeated warily. “You do understand this makes me  _ more _ suspicious, not less? Nevermind. This is a problem for me, for another night. Come along, before we’re late.”

Monroe marched her like a prisoner out into a car. Charlie crawled into the backseat, opposite Hawthorne. Even in a suit, Charlie felt underdressed. Hawthorne wore a dress so deep blue it was almost black, like liquid sky. Her hair had been curled like a vintage movie star, her makeup dramatic and sensual. Charlie was starting to have second thoughts, and third, and fourth.

“Drive, Anton,” said Monroe. He shut the door and sat next to Charlie. Without a word, he took the limp tie from around her neck and tied it himself. “One night,” he said, “I will find a fledgling who can tie their own.”

“You could teach me,” she said, embarrassed. His casual work touched her. He hadn’t said a thing about the hair, her suit. 

A dry smile lit his lips. “There’s never time.”

“Good evening, Charlie,” said Hawthorne loudly and irritably.

“Evening,” she said. “Looking good.”

Charlie wished Monroe had prepped her. Hawthorne didn’t look very blind. Her eyes were nearly black and there was an awareness there.

“Yes,” said Hawthorne. “And how are you looking?”

“Terrible,” said Charlie with a groan. “I feel like an ugly stepchild here. Monroe had to tie my tie.”

“He’s used to fussing over his brats,” said Hawthorne fondly. “He had to zip my dress.”

“I—” he started, but he stopped under the combined amusement of Charlie and Hawthorne. His facade cracked. “What of it?”

Charlie gave Hawthorne a sly smile. “Why does he do that thing, where he talks like a Jane Austen villain?”

She chuckled. “He hasn’t had to interact regularly with humans or human media since the eighteen hundreds. Consequences are a bitch.”

“And so are you,” said Monroe, but there was no anger behind it. If Charlie didn’t know better, she would’ve thought it was a pitiful attempt at flirting.

Hawthorne’s smile widened. “So am I.”

“Me too,” said Charlie with a snort.

The car stopped outside a miserable looking building. The wealthy gentlemen’s club looked rich, old, and pitted with gargoyles. Charlie figured that was Camarilla enough. She was more interested than scared. If Monroe was coming here on the down low at least sort of regularly, she wasn’t about to be killed. She trusted him.

The inside felt desolate and drained, like it had seen too many generations taint the air. Portraits of dead people didn’t help things. It was suffocating whatever it was — chi, energy, ley lines, ghosts, vampires, bad vibes, the Cobweb. Charlie kept so close to Monroe that he offered his hand to hold. She forced a sneer and stepped further into the embrace of the humid bad air. It didn’t seem to bother them. It didn’t bother her. Hawthorne let Ritter guide her as they made their way upstairs.

Clearly, it was a roaring party of dress up enthusiasts. Charlie spotted more than one sword on hips, Victorian ballgowns, and military jackets for countries she was pretty sure didn’t exist anymore. The anachronistic mix polluted the air further. Cliques drank blood out of crystal under a chandelier that could’ve bought a house in Beverly Hills. A dozen couples danced to string music like no one told them the waltz had gone out of style.

“Oh god,” said Charlie in distaste. She could only imagine how the prince was if this was his court.

“Elysium does have that effect,” said Monroe wryly. “Let’s get the reintroductions out of the way. Oh, Carlyle!”

A man in a thankfully normal-looking suit stopped and turned. Charlie recognised him as part of the party that had come to grimly declare the Valley Prince’s praxis. Carlyle Lorraine. He beamed and engaged in a fitful handshake with Monroe, calling him “old sport”.

Charlie stared, feeling like a ping pong ball that somehow ended up playing pinball. She caught Ritter’s eye. He repressed a laugh.

She was so behind. God. Was  _ this _ what Monroe spent his nights doing?

Charlie accepted Carlylye’s handshake. He gave her a funny look.

“Malkavian, right?” he said, like they had met before at Harvard’s polo team. “You were barely cold when we first met.”

“Yep,” she said dimly. “That’s me. New fledgling. Right off the press.”

“This is one of the prince’s childer,” said Monroe. “He plays an excellent game of chess, but favours his bishops too much.”

Carlyle scowled. “At least, I—”

“And he’s also going to retrieve his parents and brother so we can make a proper introduction,” finished Monroe with an icy nod.

Carlyle swallowed and disappeared across the hall, like some servant sent running.

“The fuck’s going on?” whispered Charlie.

“Some kindred play pretend at marriage,” said Hawthorne. “Choose children, each blood them. Family, but entirely Camarilla-approved, if a little strange.”

“Mind how you talk about people in public,” Monroe reprimanded. “Both of you.”

That wasn’t exactly what Charlie had meant, but she couldn’t put her words in order fast enough. Carlyle had returned, along with the Tremere apprentice who had come with—

Monroe and Ritter knelt. Hawthorne curtsied. Charlie staggered, feeling like the only meerkat who didn’t see the lion. And it was a lion. A big, proper, king-of-the-jungle lion who should’ve been in a zoo or eating antelope on the Serengeti. The coat shone like gold and smelled like Old Spice. Beautiful huge eyes, tawny marbles with more intelligence than any cat or dog.

“You’re the moonchilde, aren’t you?”

Charlie dragged her eyes up from the animal. The couple, Carlyle and Remus’s parents, didn’t look too much older than their kids. Petra van Allen looked like a blood-dipped icicle. Her husband, the Valley Prince—

Right.

Charlie dropped to her knees. She felt Monroe’s disapproval sent out in waves.

The prince howled with laughter and pulled her up. For the second time that night, a man clasped her in a hug. Charlie bristled but managed to return it.

“Come on, Petra,” the prince cajoled. “Just because you got to pick your sire, doesn’t mean we all did. Malkavians still got fangs, still got feelings that can be hurt. Are your feelings hurt? And get up, dumbass.” Bartholomew Vaughn pulled away and clicked his fingers at Monroe. “Do we have to do this  _ every  _ time?”

Barty. Now she got it. This was not a Bartholomew.

“Yes, Your Highness,” said Monroe mildly. “Now—”

“Pardon me, but there are no ghouls permitted within elysium,” said… the most beautiful woman Charlie had ever seen. A literal goddess brought to earth. Beautiful and terrible, unknowable. Charlie wanted to fall to her knees and worship. Monroe’s voice was a distant last on the list of things Charlie could pay attention to.

“... extenuating circumstances, Madame Seneschal. A service ghoul—”

“All ghouls are service ghouls. The rules are clear—”

“Rules, rules, I’m the prince, goddamnit, woman,” snapped Barty. “And, if you could give that ghoul three seconds of your attention, you can  _ clearly _ see it’s your master’s. Do you need someone to set you up with a mirror to keep you quiet?”

The beautiful woman became more terrible, burning like the sun, if the sun was red. Red. Red. “I am quite alright, Your Highness.” She drifted off but Charlie didn’t have her own mind back until Monroe put a steadying hand on her.

Charlie felt her eyes moisten. “She…”

“Victoria Ash’s a bitch,” said Barty. “But she’s my bitch, for now. Go on, Matthew. What were you saying?”

Monroe began to relax again. “If I could, I would like to introduce my esteemed childer. Miss Audrey Hawthorne, formerly winter ghoul of Clan Ventrue and new childe of the Clan of Kings, Tenth of the Line of Artemis Orthia. And… Ms Charlie Bradley, a Malkavian childe I have been honoured to introduce into the night.”

Barty chuckled gleefully. “Alright, Monroe. Charmed. This is my sweet Petra, good herald of the Prince of Los Angeles,” he said in a mighty voice. “Her childe, Remus, is the Seventh High Apprentice of the Five Stars Chantry. And this is Carlyle, I bit him after a late night run to Taco Bell.”

Charlie didn’t manage to suppress her laugh in time. Petra eyed her, but there was a gentle smile there now. Remus snickered.

Carlyle winced. “I would  _ love _ to say that he’s wrong.”

Monroe allowed himself a laugh. “Great things from humble beginnings, I am sure.”

“Look at us, old friend,” said Barty in a gentler voice. “Who’d have thought?”

“Not you, that’s for sure,” said Monroe.

“That, at least, we can agree on.” Petra chuckled and flagged down a ghoul for drinks. Each took a glass. The crystal was warm to the touch, like it had been left in a sauna.

Barty raised his first. “To two Ventrue dregs, destined to die in their sire’s shadows, and look what they’ve managed to make of themselves.”

Charlie was watching Monroe. A wild part of her thought the blood was poisoned, a betrayal in the court, a snake in the grass. It was only a moment, but Monroe hesitated. Then, he covered it with a, “To what we built for ourselves,” and the glasses clinked.

The lion grunted, discontented, at the prince’s side. Barty dropped a hand to scratch behind the ears and the lion murmured. The powerful muscled body arched into the touch.

“Don’t be scared of Mithras,” said Monroe indulgently. “He’s a lovely beast, if a bit excessive.”

“Lions, kings, princes, crowns,” said Barty with a roll of his eyes. “It all makes sense!”

“It makes no sense, my dear,” said Petra, putting a hand on Barty’s back. He looked at her with a smile and something passed.

“The symbology is tight, but there might be something to say about…” Monroe stopped abruptly. He got a look in his eye that scared Charlie: far-off and distant and hopeful. Monroe was a lot of things. Dreamy wasn’t one of them. “Pardon me, Your Highness, just a moment,” he murmured.

And he walked off, still like in a dream. He went right up to a man on the edge of another clique. Once they recognised each other, the stranger pulled him into a fierce hug. Charlie couldn’t hear what was said.

“What’s happening?” asked Hawthorne.

“He just… hugged some dude over there,” said Charlie.

“What does he look like?”

Charlie shrugged, bewildered. “I don’t know. Like a dude. Black hair, kinda shaggy and limp. He’s dressed like Monroe normally is, jacket and jeans, but his jeans are dirty at the back. Paint and oil, I think.”

Hawthorne smiled to herself, soft.

“Am I missing something?” demanded Charlie.

Monroe pulled the guy over to the rest of them. The guy looked like he was a couple of kind words away from bursting into tears. Up close, he looked a lot scruffier. The jeans and jacket were cheap and department store, and not taken care of. The red tie he wore didn’t match with anything and hung crooked. No wonder he stood out. 

Monroe held him protectively, one arm behind him, another placed on his chest. He didn’t look to be anymore stable emotionally. “Your—” he started, but swallowed the second word. “Barty,” he said earnestly, “this is Justin Merlot.”

Barty raised his eyebrows and waited for him to go on. “Yeah. I know. The kid introduced himself to the crown last week.”

Justin couldn’t take his eyes off Monroe. “Thought I shouldn’t make the addendum, that Ventrue are real particular about this.”

Monroe shook his head. “It’s alright, boy.”

Justin exchanged an awkward look with Charlie and the rest of them. “My name’s Justin Merlot, Clan Ventrue, originally Baltimore, also DC, sometimes New Orleans. I was sired and abandoned by some tool out east—”

“You can just say it,” said Monroe.

Justin took his eyes off the prince to say, “So, I guess I’m a childe of Matthew Monroe.” He barely finished the last syllable before he threw himself back in the hug. Justin sniffed and started to cry, murmuring. “I knew I’d find you out here. I  _ knew it _ .”

“Slick,” said Barty. “That is Matthew’s M.O.”

Charlie whispered to Hawthorne, “Does he have a lot of these?”

“Too many,” she whispered back. “Five.”

Charlie had never been the jealous type. More than anything, she was worried about that look on Monroe’s face. The flash of desperate joy, of weakness. And she stopped herself. When had she started to think of happiness as weakness? This was a wonderful reunion.

“Five more?” Barty echoed. “You should put in the calls. Get your brats out here, man. If they want to stay in the Valley, I’ll treat them like family.”

It sounded so harmless, so earnest. 

Monroe turned himself and Justin so that he could talk to Barty. “I’ve been meaning to call them. I got plenty of room in Silver Lake, too.”

Justin nodded animatedly. “I’m coming back with you, even if I’m gonna sleep in a closet with Sabbat outside.”

“It’ll be safer here,” scoffed Barty.

Monroe raised an eyebrow. “Will it be?”

Barty grumbled. The lion growled.

Nothing was so harmless.


	26. Hope

“How does it feel, to return as a vampire to the shadow of human civilization, while other kindred are allowed masks?” asked Hawthorne sweetly.

There was no reason to lie. “Shitty.”

She smirked and stroked his arm. She couldn’t see the strange eyes she caught, as she walked with Monroe as an invisible guide. Likely, Hawthorne wouldn’t care if she knew. Monroe cared more. It was more than simply being unseen. For decades, the gaze of humanity had been his salve when kindred society shunned and scorned him. To lose it, even in the face of gaining his own kind’s approval, tasted bitter.

They walked through the Grove. Toreador-infested Hollywood and Central LA ensured it was a popular feeding ground. Late night shoppers, domestic dates finishing over ice cream, movie theatres pouring out audiences on interval. The demographics skewed younger, smelling of weed and beer. Those not there to take in the refined district, but instead cause trouble.

Hawthorne did not want to say it. She wanted to say it so little, in fact, that she told Ritter and sent him like a messenger pigeon. She knew she was overdue for her Choosing. Capital-C, on most accounts. The third night of a new Ventrue’s existence, when they walked the kine and found their feeding predilection. It was past time. Ritter had suffered enough. Even feeding him his vitae every other day, Monroe knew the ghoul struggled as being Hawthorne’s sole vessel. 

To sustain Ritter, Monroe had to drink. Plenty. It was only a matter of days before Monroe lost his patience with drinking cold blood that did not satisfy his gnawing hunger. Invisible, he would have to hunt and stalk. He couldn’t seduce. Not safely. This was not a road he wanted to go down again.

Mostly, however, the Choosing involved walking and up down among crowds as Hawthorne made snarky comments. Monroe didn’t mind. He treasured her good mood, even if it covered her own fear. If she acted brave, she would be brave. She knew it. He knew it. 

They did not know what they were looking for, but it would be a person who shared a dark personal mark with her. Murderer, perhaps a torturer. As minutes turned to hours, Monroe kept his suspicions private. He suspected her requirement was long-lived ghouls.

He chuckled at her mean comments about the modern music pumped in around the Grove.

Then, she tensed. They stopped. Her grip on him tightened. She sniffed and shuddered, shying away and cleaving closer to him.

“I’ll help,” he said calmly. “It’s why I’m here. Tell me where.”

Hawthorne’s facade cracked, deep. “Left. There are… some people there. One of them. Are they together?”

A group loitered outside a storefront. Monroe relayed it. A gang of young women talked, while an older man stood away, talking on a phone. “He’s leaving,” said Monroe.

“It’s him,” she said. Her voice held a restrained tremor.

They followed at a distance.

“How am I supposed to do this alone?” she said desperately. “I can’t—”

“Everybody relies on someone sometime,” said Monroe. “I relied on you for decades. You still have skills I don’t. It is only a matter of adjusting. How many times did you bring me a vessel?”

Sarcasm lingered in Hawthorne’s face, but she only said, “Too many.”

The man might’ve been in his forties, white, in sweatpants and in need of a shave and shower. Not a distinguished meal, especially after Ritter, who Monroe knew from experience tasted like imported cologne. He retreated to the parking lot and a beater blinked headlights at him.

“Practice Dominate,” he advised. “It is possible to channel commands by voice alone—”

“I have been,” she said tensely. “Anton’s getting sick of me practicing on him. Lift the pen. Stand up. Sit down.” Beginning to panic, Hawthorne raised her voice, “Excuse me! I’m sorry, but could you help me?  _ Come here a minute _ . Our car…”

Monroe patted her arm. There was no need. Too long with Ventrue blood ensured she had a better grasp of the Discipline than most.

The man followed them to the car. Another command and he got inside.

“Do you want me here?” asked Monroe as Hawthorne slid in with him.

She shook her head. He shut the door on them and waited. Monroe crossed his arms and ignored the scent of blood. She had the restraint to not kill Ritter. Every hunt, every vessel was another risk, though.

The scent faded. She had licked the wound sealed. Monroe clicked the car fob again, to ensure the doors locked. Hawthorne would question the man about his life, his past, his darkest moments, things that deeply affected his personhood. And wait for something to resonate.

It didn’t take long. Hawthorne called for him and Monroe opened the doors. The man stumbled out, dazed and confused. She had even managed his memories. Perfect. 

Monroe stuck his head in the back. Hawthorne gnawed on her lips, head bowed.

“Do you want to stay here or get in the front?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. He gave her a moment before moving to shut the door. 

“Wait,” she said in a small voice. 

Hawthorne extended a hand, not far enough to reach him. He met her the rest of the way and allowed her to pull him in. The door shut. The backseat felt smaller. There was no room for the two of them and the secret of whatever had transpired. Her hand slipped from him, without strength, and the distance grew.

“You don’t need to tell me. It—”

“There was this girl,” she said quietly. “She married young, a good man and a friend. They had kids, built a house in the country and made it a home. And she was so lonely. Were she around today, she would’ve been diagnosed with postpartum depression. But she wasn’t. She isn’t. So, when this magnificent man came around with this aura that always made her happy…” She shook her head. “She’d do anything for him. Thirty years later, abandoned in Paris, she chose to live in this nightmare rather than die.” She scoffed, a wet noise from the base of her chest. “I thought… It could be so many things. Murderers. Kidnappers. Victims of… abuse, rape even could be argued.”

“Audrey,” said Monroe in a strangled voice. He reached out and pulled her into him. She didn’t resist. She felt so unnatural in his arms, solid and impenetrable and delicate. On the verge of collapse.

“That man. The one I drank from. He came here to return a crib,” said Hawthorne, calm and steady. “It’s parents whose children have died.”

She moved into his arms, empty of tears, but in need of comfort. What little he could give. Monroe pulled her close and braced his head against hers.

“I’m proud of you,” he said. “For facing this. It’s never easy.”

Hawthorne stiffened. “I don’t want pity.”

“It’s not pity,” he said, hurt. “My Choosing left me alone with a dead street urchin and Fowler.”

Her hand lay on his chest and played with the buttons there. “Fowler’s was Catholics. I  _ wish _ I could just eat Catholics.”

Monroe felt no need to finish the sentiment. “You will find a way. You can get Ritter on it, finding vessels for a black book, or stockpiling cold blood. You don’t need to prey like this.”

Hawthorne burrowed deeper into his arms, as though he could take away the curse he had given her. Monroe stood by his choices. Not even when he discovered the Embrace had left her blind did he regret it. Right then, he did. It was damnation. An understanding inflicted from sire to childe, an eternity preying on yourself.

“I came back to America with Fowler,” she said dimly. “He never found out, but I ran away one day. Hopped on a train, stole a car. As fast as I could. It had been too long. I needed to see home. I was weak, then. Could’ve been killed and no one, least of all me, would’ve argued. When I found the farm plot my husband and I had, I watched. And I knew I had no place left in the human world.”

“Why?” asked Monroe. Her hair brushed his lips.

“My husband was dead and buried on the land. Old age. My first son was dead, my second an old man. And I… I looked like this. I had made my bed and it was time to lie in it.”

She spoke as if her pain was no consequence, but it had manifested in the Blood. Her feeding requirement. The natural loss of her son bit as hard tonight as it had more than a century ago.

Monroe could see it, knew it intimately. He knew the road laid out before her and, while he did not pity her the way she feared, his sympathies were with her. He wished she didn’t have to go down it.

But she did. There was nothing to be done about it. 

In her own time, she came to the front seat. Uncertain, Monroe laid his hand over hers. Hawthorne took his hand and gripped it tight. Her eyes were soft, but she didn’t cry. It wasn’t her style. Monroe waited in the silence until she told him to drive.

“Will you be alright to come to Medusa or do you want to go home?” he asked.

She didn’t answer, but she held onto his hand. “I’ll be fine.”

“Miss Hawthorne—”

“I want to  _ see  _ them.” She smiled at her own joke. It seemed genuine. 

Monroe needed a location that, as far as kindred went, was off the grid. He needed a benefactor without sect loyalty, but instead  _ personal _ loyalty. Rubio’s restaurant had almost completed construction. It would open to the public and kindred in another few weeks.

Rubio greeted them at the backdoor. It still felt odd to see him out of a greasy apron. The snake cleaned up well. Pleasantries and smalltalk languished. Monroe could never stand it and redirected the conversation as soon as polite.

“I really appreciate this,” said Monroe.

Rubio shook his head. “We all have needs sometimes, captain. If I can help, I can help.”

“You’re invited to stay,” he said, rather unwillingly. It was a formality and Rubio’s smirk knew.

“I’ll leave your little Ventrue party alone. Come on in.”

Rubio showed them into the cathedral-like cavern, slate rock walls carved in meticulous designs. Flowers and snakes, scenes of kindred mythology and the ancient blood gods. Electric candles flickered, cheery and ominous. A large round table held several bottles of wine and beer, glassware, and the smell of blood.

“Ventrue are a sort of sticky sort,” said Rubio. “No offence. Didn’t know if I should supply from those vessels you earmarked for yourself, years back, or…”

“The effort was kind,” said Hawthorne.

Rubio sighed and his face strained as he itched to shake hands. “It’s good to see you again, Miss Hawthorne, out of his batcave. Are you well?”

Hawthorne’s grip on Monroe’s arm tightened. “I’m better than I have been in a while, and worse.”

Rubio nodded knowingly. “Every fledgling, ghoul or not, has a hard road to walk,” he said with deep sincerity. “Know others have and their paths blaze beneath your feet. Stay sure-footed. The Captain will not lead you astray.”

“You should sire,” said Monroe, meaning it as much compliment as advice.

“I’d never damn a fresh soul to this.”

“Hospice, then,” said Hawthorne. “Few want to die.”

Rubio did not want to argue. A word of goodbye and he left. Monroe listened and gave the domain a cursory sweep with Auspex. Rubio had kept his word. It was clean. They were alone.

Hawthorne sat and reached gently for a beer. She opened it on a fang and took a much needed drink.

“I’ll be back,” said Monroe hastily as he followed Rubio out the exit. He caught him out in the parking lot, bewildered. “I need an answer and I need it honest.”

Rubio stared. “I’m always honest with you, friend.”

“You might’ve sold bloodwine recently to a man, about my height, blonde, but old. Perhaps one of his ghouls. They would’ve spoken with an accent—”

“Dutch.” He nodded and smiled pleasantly. “The better question is how you know the archon. I don’t mean to be judgmental, but do all Ventrue know each other?”

“In a way.” Monroe sighed. “Manuel, I trust you know what you are doing. You’re no neonate. You are a survivor of your clan, as I am of mine. But Jan Pieterzoon, until he is officially on our side, can be quite dangerous.”

Rubio’s smile startled. “ ‘Until’?”

Monroe blanched and floundered for words. “What I mean—”

“Is that you are a survivor of your clan, as I am of mine,” said Rubio knowingly. “I don’t begrudge your nature. In fact, I’m counting on it, as I suspect one night you will remember what clan sired me. Go. Have a good night with your childer. You look like you need it.”

Rubio gave him a well-meaning push. Monroe remembered. The Setite Ministry, even if Rubio had only weathered a few years, would have left its own brand, its own teachings. Rumour had it that a ministry in the hills brought the downfall of the old LA prince’s court. Moral corruption and degradation, supposedly freeing the soul from chains of mortal virtues. In many ways, Ashley was more Setite than Rubio.

_ Prince of Los Angeles _ .

Monroe did not like the way his mind worked as he remembered.

Hawthorne nursed her bottle at the table. “What was that?”

“Rubio’s been selling to the archon,” said Monroe wearily. “He’s establishing value to the Valley Camarilla, expecting I will use him to destroy it from within.”

“Smart.” She drank. “Did you have Ritter contact Folchart and Grimes?”

Monroe sat next to her and took his own drink. “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “They have good lives in the Camarilla and won’t risk coming to the Free State.”

“Since we’re considering siccing a Setite on the Valley, can’t say I blame them,” she said. “Still. After what you did for them, it’s a nasty way to repay you.”

“Some people aren’t loyal to you, they are loyal to their need of you. Once their needs change, so does their loyalty.”

She glanced to him. “Are you trying to slip in some schooling?”

“Always. It’s why my childer all hate me.”

“Lay it on me.” She sat back with a smirk.

Monroe had to smile. “Alright, then. Dealing with underlings, it’s best to set them against each other. It keeps their attention away from your own station and their ambitions focused on retaining their station, rather than advancing onto you. This is how the clan works.”

Hawthorne digested that slowly. “It’s how you work,” she determined. “The way your first mate has—”

“My what?” Monroe laughed, understanding.

“It’s what they’re calling Ashley Swan. Captain has a first mate. Regardless, you’ve let him bitch about Abrams until everyone in Blue Moon wants to hit him if he comes in five blocks of the place.”

“I don’t like working like this, but Ashley needs some special attention,” said Monroe. “He tried to kill Voerman as his overlord. He  _ did _ help me kill Garcia.”

“How do you prefer working?”

Monroe kept an ear and eye on the door before he answered. “Pretend to be one of them. Let them know your face, cultivate loyalty with friendship and generosity. If they harbour rebellion, it will make them hesitate — which is all you need.”

Hawthorne set her drink down. “I don’t like where this is going. You’re telling me—”

“You will  _ never  _ be one of them,” he said, but not gently enough. “Respect the power you attain. If you have accumulated followers, you are their leader. If you blood a ghoul, you are their regent. If you make or find a childe, you are their sire. Make them forget your place and they will serve you happily, but you are never allowed to forget it yourself.”

“No wonder everyone hates Ventrue,” she said, leaning on her hands. “We really are that insufferable.”

“Honourable and responsible,” he corrected. “They serve you, while you serve your honour. A social contract decides how they serve you, but you have nothing but your own compass to dictate your treatment of them.”

She mulled over it. “This is it, isn’t it?” she asked. “Preying on people. Scheming. Alone.  _ Honourable _ .”

“Welcome to the clan,” he said dryly. “It’s terrible. You’ll learn to love it.” He clicked his drink against hers, which made her smile.

Charlie came first, with Justin. They, at least, got along well. Both had common origins, Embraced in the last five years, and it was refreshing to see that Justin still wore ratty oil-stained jeans. Monroe didn’t want to let on how worried he was about his childer meeting. All came from different cities. Justin from Baltimore, Red from Dallas, Lloyd from DC. Charlie from LA. They had never met.

“This looks like a shit party, man,” said Justin. He squeezed Hawthorne’s shoulder as he passed to sit on Monroe’s other side. “Ain’t this a shit party, Miss H? Good to see you in fangs, by the way, don’t think I congratulated you.”

“Making friends?” Monroe asked Charlie.

She shrugged and sat beside Justin. “Cell mates.”

Monroe reached for a bottle and handed it to Justin. There were no labels and he sneered, eyes sparkling.

“What? Anarchs  _ bottle _ their blood?”

“Just drink it,” said Charlie, taking her own.

Justin wrenched off the cap. As soon as he smelled it, his entire demeanor changed. “No way, yo.”

“Thank Manuel Rubio,” said Charlie. “He’s the brewmaster around here.”

Justin chugged his in one breathless gulp, before reaching for another. He laughed as Hawthorne told him off, that two more were coming and they needed to share. He sat back, smacking his lips, disappointed.

Justin’s hand clawed at Monroe’s to get his attention.

“Thank you,” he said intensely.

“It was nothing.”

“It was, though,” insisted Justin. 

It was all they could say in company. Monroe hadn’t wanted a moment alone with Justin. They hadn’t seen each other since the Baltimore prince had taken Monroe’s lifeboon in exchange for sparing their lives. Justin had been chased from the city.

_ Prince of Los Angeles _ .

Monroe dodged Justin’s eye. “Lloyd Sheehan is coming. Figured it would be good—”

“Oh shit,” groaned Justin. He dropped his head to smack on the table.

Charlie glanced up from her beer. “What’s the matter with you two?”

Justin winced. “I bailed on Lloyd, almost three years back. Monroe set him up as my babysitter in DC after… after I fucked up. ”

“He wasn’t your babysitter,” he chided.

“He was,” said Hawthorne fairly. “Someone just should’ve babysat Lloyd, too.”

A door clanged open and shut. Ten o’clock. Brujah weren’t known for their punctuality, but Lloyd could be if he wanted to.

Justin put on a good face and rose to greet Lloyd. The burly kid was a shaggy dirty blonde in a battle vest, a cut-off jean vest covered in patches of east coast punk bands and homemade Anarch ones. Monroe still spotted the upside down V, sign of Monroe’s own Methusala. Subtle. Lloyd once wore the Ventrue icon, but he had got the shit kicked out of him too many times.

“Lloyd,” said Justin with a wide grin and fearful eyes. “Been a while, man. Hey, how’s your sister? Wanna hug it out?”

Brujah didn’t hug. Justin knew that. But Justin, even with ignoble origins, was a Ventrue, and Monroe’s Ventrue at that. He knew what people needed from him. Whether or not he gave it was a different story. He gave what Lloyd needed for them to make up, though.

A target.

A blur of Celerity and Potence hit Justin with the force of a bus. One good punch and Justin flew across the restaurant. He landed on a table, groaning. “I’m okay,” he hollered.

“Not gonna be when I’m finished with you,” snapped Lloyd. A tinge of frenzy hit his eyes.

Monroe stood. “Alright. If you want a cage match, I’ll find you a place. Not here. A very good friend of mine owns this place,” he said irritably. He pressed a beer into Lloyd’s hands and used the skin contact to flush him with calming Presence. “Thanks for coming out. I know it’s a long trip.”

Lloyd gave Monroe a once over. Monroe had forgotten that face. Since Anarchs couldn’t get new tattoos outside LA’s Tzimisce, they settled for warpaint and re-piercing themselves each night. Steel glinted in Lloyd’s eyebrow and nose. Blue streaks ran down the tendons in his neck. Blue, for Ventrue. Not a mark any Brujah would willingly give themselves.

Slowly, Lloyd smiled and Monroe felt himself reflect. “Come here, captain,” said Lloyd.

Monroe let him hug him. Diesel clung to him like a perfume, road dust like dandriff.

Introductions exchanged and Lloyd and Charlie got to talking. Lloyd kicked motorcycle boots up to the table. After a hesitation, Justin came back to join them.

“If you’re Anarch, why did you not want to come to the LA sooner?” asked Charlie, confused.

“Loyal opposition,” said Monroe.

Lloyd scowled at the truth. “The Tower needs its checks and balances. Vitel’s more willing to listen than any prince this side of Thorns. Mostly, I’ve been waiting for your say-so that LA’s safe and not the clusterfuck everyone knows it is.”

“LA’s about the furthest thing from safe, especially now,” said Hawthorne.

“Nowhere’s really safe,” said Lloyd with a shrug. “Vitel could’ve decided one night to be a hell of a lot less lenient and killed us all for talking shit.” He looked over Charlie to Justin. “Or killed my sister.”

Justin shrugged in a pitiful sort of way. “Your sister’s hot.” At Charlie’s skeptical look, he added, “She’s a lick, too. Don’t worry.”

“She’s too deep into this Cam shit, though,” said Lloyd. “Brujah Primogen’s favourite little bitch.”

“She’s a whip,” said Monroe testily. “Show some respect.”

The door opened and closed again. It wouldn’t be like Red to be late. Monroe prepared himself for the worst and hurried to meet her.

Hawthorne crossed herself and said a quick ironic prayer.

“Someone else?” asked Lloyd after him. “Who else does he got?”

“More than what came,” said Hawthorne darkly. “I’m gonna call Grimes myself, I swear.”

Red looked much the same. Sandra Redding, a lover of the Dallas Ventrue’s whip he had foolishly Embraced. A Toreador might’ve gotten there first. She was startlingly pretty, a heart-shaped face and sleek orange hair. Grey freckles crossed her nose. She shook out a wet umbrella. 

Monroe set her the agoge. Under him, she had rose high in the Dallas court, subsuming her sire as the clan’s whip and holding the primogen’s ear. Leaving her had been difficult. He hadn’t expected her, of all his childer, to come.

An awkward moment hung between them. Twenty years had been enough for the clan to burn the warmth out of her. Monroe was surprised how much her clipped voice hurt.

“Apologies for my tardiness, sir. Traffic from San Diego delayed me. Trust it will not happen again.” She spoke with her same east Texas twang, though the edges of her words had been tamed.

“I told you just to come by LAX,” said Monroe. “It’s safer than going through San Bernardino or South LA.”

Her smile was stilted, calm, even cold. Professional. Red’s mistrust and shrewd intelligence made her untrustworthy, in Hawthorne’s eyes. Monroe understood Red. At least, he understood the neonate he had left in the eighties.

In the dining room, Lloyd and Justin laughed loudly. Hawthorne snorted. New bottles opened.

Red’s breath hitched. She always wanted to be what she wasn’t. As a discarded and abandoned clan outcast, she wanted in the Camarilla and its power. Now, a stiff Ventrue loyalist, she wanted to be an outcast among Anarchs, free to drink and laugh and smile.

Monroe offered his arm. With a sigh, she took it.

“Thank you,” she said meekly. “You mentioned a new fledgling you found?”

He nodded. “A Malkavian. I’ll introduce you all. You’re among friends.”

“Friends,” she mused. “What a world this is.”

Red, as he expected, was a harder sell. She came in what the clan considered street clothes, much like Hawthorne, though Red favoured greys: a conservative grey dress with a jacket and pearls. She took a look at Lloyd and Charlie, their obvious otherness, and gave a small, “Oh, my.”

“I’d ask if she’s really yours,” said Lloyd coarsely, “but she looks a fuck of a lot more like yours than me.”

“She looks like your sister,” said Justin, standing with a blinding smile. He stuck out a hand. “Hey. Justin Merlot.”

“Don’t even try,” said Hawthorne. She smirked. “You’ll regret it.”

Red amicably took Justin’s hand, but her eyes lingered on Lloyd. Reluctantly, Lloyd took his boots off the table and kicked the last remaining chair out for her. She sat between him and Hawthorne.

“So,” she asked with nervous excitement, “where do you come from?”

Amused, Lloyd broke out into his story, the story of his and his sister’s Embrace. How he was lucky Vitel didn’t get his fangs into him. Red was a rapt audience, used to playing far higher class victims. Monroe would have to talk to her about that.

The beer finished. The wine came soon after. Lloyd, Charlie, and Monroe made it through the blood. Rubio had even left them a white spirit of some sort. Intended to be white, at least, it poured pink. It burned down the throat and up into the head. After a sip, Monroe gave the rest to Justin.

It took hours, of drinking and sharing life stories, but they all found common ground. Charlie told Lloyd about Blue Moon and he just about lost his shit. Justin and Lloyd loved cars and wanted to reopen their auto shop. Charlie even agreed to take up knitting when Red said it was a soothing hobby, if Red agreed to come surfing. Somehow, Hawthorne and Justin argued over him about the finer points of French cinema. It almost made him turn back to the white liquor. 

Lloyd attempted to  _ ting ting _ his fang on his glass for silence. He jumped on the table, dexterous like a cat. “So. Let’s make a toast. Big fucking question is why are we all here?” he asked, struggling to string words together after consuming enough liquor to kill a mortal. “Life under the captain’s gotta be better. That’s why we’re all here, ain’t it? We trust this blue bastard. And not because he’ll kill you nicer than the next guy or whispers in the prince’s ear or is richer than God. It’s because he do what he do.” Lloyd raised his fresh glass. “I always said I’d follow you into hell. Looks like you’re gonna make me keep my word.”

They all drank and Monroe wondered if Rubio would complain if they stayed the day.

“I am surprised,” Monroe declared. “That was very Ventrue of you.”

Lloyd bowed and almost fell face forward. Charlie pulled him back down by the back of his jacket. He hit the floor, laughing. Justin tried to drag him up, but stumbled and collapsed. Charlie shouted, “Dog pile!” and jumped on, too.

“Children,” scoffed Hawthorne.

“Our children,” said Monroe. He realised his arm was around the back of her chair. Her head leaned on his shoulder. When had that happened?

The glass stopped half-way to her lips. She smirked and drank. “We should get Barty out here.”

“We should. Tell Rubio to make some more whiskey.”

_ Prince of Los Angeles _ .

Monroe could do it. He could talk Jan into letting Barty live. Even if Barty’s persona had become an act instead of his truth, he had been a good friend and a good man once. He could be again. Petra could warm up to Monroe. Carlyle and Remus could get on with this rabble.

Monroe knew he was a rational creature, able to analyze problems at a distance. Power, to him, was not ego, but responsibility. Honour. Lloyd would always find his concerns heard and listened to. The Anarchs would always be welcome at the table. Loyal opposition, as they should be.

Justin, after his struggles as a drifter and three years harder than Monroe’s own, would find peace. Like Charlie, the storm had passed and they could flourish and find themselves. They could learn to thrive, rather than survive.

And when Red tired of being an outcast, Monroe could be there as her invite into the Camarilla.  _ Prince of Los Angeles _ . In the decades later, when she longed for something new, he, too, would be there to assuage her needs.

And Hawthorne, who so wanted what her Camarilla masters always had, would have her place. First childe of the prince. Many Ventrue princes did not keep a Ventrue Primogen. Monroe could. He could. 

Hawthorne felt his stare. She turned towards him and slid a hand over his leg under the table. Their fingers tangled. The weight of impossible nights lifted. He was not home. But he could see it.

Barty could keep LA. Monroe wanted San Francisco again, to walk the streets, see what mortals had made of it, the mark kindred had left on the Bay. 

When they ran out of alcohol, the night was forced to come to a close. Charlie dragged Justin, who dragged Lloyd, and promised Monroe they would take a taxi back to Blue Moon. Red, Monroe knew, would want a hotel room but would never ask. It was already settled. She left in her own cab.

Monroe stood with a groan and started to collect glasses. Was the dishwasher operational? He didn’t want to leave Rubio’s restaurant a mess.

It was good to know Hawthorne, ghoul or kindred, could not find silence with alcohol in her. 

“Maybe we should see about getting Justin back in college,” she was saying. “The boy never finished his associate’s. And, you know, Lloyd could do with some book-learning. I’ve taken some UCLA classes he’d enjoy.”

“Did you go back?” asked Monroe, confused.

Hawthorne sighed. “Yes, but no. I got Ritter to re-enroll me, only correspondence courses until the war is over. Ashley  _ may _ technically have the hills, but I’m not trusting that close to Westside.”

Monroe sat next to her again. “As much as I love having them here, a hostage situation is a real danger. Fortier wanted to take you for your tour.”

She snorted. “Good luck.  _ Oh _ . And I’ve been thinking. About Westside. Surely, we’re not going to purge the entire place. Meaning, some will survive. I’m thinking of the Ambles. Anyone with fairweather loyalties knows where the wind blows, right? Good. And. Darsh’s mistress? She’s an art dealer.” Hawthorne beamed, so unnaturally pleased with herself Monroe had to laugh. “Voerman is, too.”

“We’re probably going to kill Voerman,” he said.

But Hawthorne wasn’t listening. “I’m taking art history courses, now. It’s actually very interesting. We got into the obsession the Victorian era had with what they called Oriental style, which actually combined huge swathes of Middle Eastern cultures. Slaves, harems, markets, snake charmers, I’m sure you the charic— characta—”

“Caricature,” said Monroe. Her eyes glistened with excitement and a smile she couldn’t wash off, no matter what shape her mouth took. 

Hawthorne leaned over to grab his hand. “Exactly! Victorians loved nudity as much as any man, from any time, but they couldn’t portray it without socially acceptable cause — like, mythology. But there’s only so much Aphrodite people can paint before someone has to admit it’s for the breasts. Orientalism, and racism, let them portray as many sexy slave girls as they wanted and… and…” She shook her head.

He smiled and took her hand. “I’m listening. Go on.”

“What?” she said softly, like a tease, a taunt. Her thumb whispered over his skin. “What were you thinking about?”

“You,” he said. He brought their hands to his lips. The touch of their skin whispered to a part of him he thought long dead. 

She smirked. “Is that something new for you?”

“No.” He kissed her knuckles one by one. “You’re cunning. You’re a survivor and so, so passionate about the world, even after everything it’s done to you. You’re jaded, but strong, and beautiful and—”

“Get to the end of this bullshit,” said Hawthorne.

“I was thinking about how it might feel if you kissed me.”

“No.” She withdrew her hand and sat backward. The word dropped like a stone, rippling with echoes. Then, she smiled. “ _ You _ kiss  _ me _ .”

Monroe kissed her. And he kissed her. And he kissed her. And she kissed him. He had never been more certain about something, or more uncertain about what to do. The intimacy was new and thrilling. It had been so long since he had felt a woman in his arms. But it was where he was supposed to be. Her fingers carded through his hair, dragging him closer. It was where she belonged. Six decades, but they had finally made it. Together. Even if only for a moment.


	27. Life Without Warnings

Humans had almost gotten used to the very drunk cougar that prowled the parks and roads of Silver Lake at night. Almost. Jack encountered a few shrieks, which shrilled piercing through him, and he growled a complaint. That only made them run faster. Weren’t his fault. Should be his fault. He slunk away from Blue Moon and the artificial daylight of Sunset Junction and the mess he had left behind. What a mess. Words danced just out of reach. Should’ve found the right ones.

He melded with the boulevard grass at daybreak, scampering through Blue Moon to drink both blood and beer. It had been too long since he resigned himself to his animal shapes. The cougar knew grief. The bat knew loneliness. But they didn’t know the failed regret of language, of would’ves, of lost words, of people who changed.

Some part of him, he knew, wouldn’t transform back. Not right, at least. A tail, ears, a patch of fur. The Beast would leave its mark, the simplicity of an animal mind, and the hope it gave him.

Jack didn’t know how Monroe did it. He looked like some piece of corporate bog scum. Talked like it, too. Somehow, he moved through Blue Moon’s basement like everyone’s friend. He knew every name, their orders from Alice, their lives. Lately, he came back in with Hawthorne and a bunch of new faces, making introductions. Every night he spent with someone else. And, they all accepted him. Thao and her Deathsingers one night with Lloyd, talking about eighties metal and brand name guitars. Then, he and Hawthorne spent the whole night at the bar with Alice Zhao and Rubio, about Prohibition and bootlegging lick liquor. Sometimes, those Hollywood Nosferatu turned up, or Orsay manifested, or the Hollowmen. And they got their time, too, like everyone else.

Jack watched Monroe from afar. Sometimes as a bat in the ceiling, or a crow in the corner. He knew there was good in Monroe. He knew he made sense. So, Jack watched and tried to remember that, and forgive.

He couldn’t, but he tried. It wasn’t Monroe’s fault. It was the Hollowmen.

The ruling, had it been about anyone else, Jack would’ve thought was fair. Jack had been at Sage first. The Hollowmen broke the laws. Ryuko had been ordered to return the dogs and cats who had survived the first round of sacrifices.

All it meant was that Ryuko would find a new shelter. 

And word spread. That thinblood the Hollowmen had around wasn’t thin, wasn’t even Caitiff or ghoul. It was a  _ mage _ . A sick fuck who ferried kittens into a woodchipper. Jack didn’t recognise his lover in the gossips, but he sure recognised the guy wearing Ryuko’s face these nights.

The Hollowmen got a wider berth and the domain turned to more interesting things. Jack couldn’t put it from his mind. But he knew better than to go looking for the Hollowmen and put himself through that torment. Ryuko just needed time, like Jack needed time in the nineties when he left the Professor.

He spotted a payphone and growled reluctantly. He needed fingers for that. Jack crouched low in the bushes and let his bones warble and crack again. One piece of him didn’t transform, however. Fingers, unfortunately. Fingers shortened, nails turned thick and black, leathery pads on the bottoms, as though half-transformed.

Carefully, Jack pulled out a handful of change from his pocket and fed the payphone quarters until it let him call Monroe. He answered quick.

“Hey, it’s Jack,” he said. “Checking in. I’m fine. Don’t send a search party. Have a good night.”

“Jack—” Monroe protested.

“I only got so many quarters, captain.”

“Are you alright?”

“You know me, I’m always alright.”

Monroe paused. “Are you?”

Jack leaned his forehead against the cool glass. “No.” He swallowed. He couldn’t wallow anymore. There was work to do. People could’ve  _ died _ for his selfishness. “Damsel told me something, that the Nos’re leaving their sewers. Downtown’s scared it’s Sabbat.”

“I see.” He sighed. “I suppose the warning is Nines’ way of a peace offering.”

“It didn’t come from Nines.”

“Hmm.” Monroe considered. “If you are alright, I would appreciate looking into this, but do it delicately. Don’t start fights on this account. We can fortify and retreat into the hills, if we need to.” When Jack didn’t answer, he asked, “Is there something else?”

Jack scratched the back of his head. He had never been someone who shied away from unpleasant truths. He’d rather take his medicine, no matter how bitter. And move on. “You can’t trust Ryuko. He’s not himself.” Jack couldn’t stop himself. “Man. I — This Hollowmen are shit. I don’t know what this cult’s having him do, but he’s not acting normal. I’ve seen this before.”

“Some people lose themselves in their need,” said Monroe. “The faith of the Hollowmen, the community, it fulfills something.” 

Jack slunk lower against the booth, bracing against Monroe’s words. It sounded like he was blaming Jack for Ryuko. Maybe he was even right. If he had done better, if he… 

“The Hollowmen themselves, I understand them — I do,” he added as Jack scoffed. “They are outcasts, long shunned by those who took them in who knew their former sect hunted them. They lost almost everything, twice.”

“They aren’t you,” said Jack flatly. “They’re ruthless, arrogant, cruel.” 

Monroe sniffed with amusement. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“They’re Cainites, right? Murderers. Demons. Fallen angels. They almost killed one of the Reapers. If they think we won’t put up with them, maybe they’ll start thinking the Sabbat might if they turn you out on a silver plate. Besides,” added Jack, “Ryuko’s… He’s old, even if he doesn’t look it. And he’s sick. It’s making him desperate. He won’t let himself be turned, but he’s hunting after magic — no matter what it costs.”

Monroe didn’t say anything for too long. Jack almost thought he hung up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I should’ve listened to you when you advised us to not involve him in our affairs.”

“It’s not your fault,” he snapped.

“I tipped the first domino.”

“No,” shouted Jack. “Don’t start that! It’s no one’s fault. No one’s. You can’t blame yourself for other people’s decisions. No one shoved him towards that fucking cult. Sometimes people change, and they don’t ask first, and they’re weak and vulnerable, and predators take advantage and— and— Just don’t say that,” he said weakly, struggling to hold back the tears that threatened his eyes. “It’s no one’s fault.”

“It’s not  _ your  _ fault,” said Monroe gently.

Jack sniffed and wished he could pitch himself headfirst through the receiver. “I know,” he said. “Listen, I’m gonna go find that Nos who escaped the sewers out here. We can talk about an anti-Sabbat plan later tonight.”

“Come to Blue at two,” said Monroe. “We can talk, then.”

“Aye, aye, captain.”

“And, Jack, thank you for checking in with me. I was getting worried.”

There was no emotion in Monroe’s voice, no addled false sincerity, but Jack knew he told the truth and he felt a twinge of guilt.

“Sorry,” he muttered. 

Jack hung up and balled his malformed claws into fists. They scraped the leathery pads without feeling. First things first. Home Depot. A pair of thick work gloves, mustard yellow, and ugly as he felt. Then, Jack took to his wings again and peaced his way through the alleys of Downtown. 

Deb was predictable. All Jack had to do was find the nearest homeless encampment to the Last Round, and then start walking. He found the dog at a 7-Eleven. Not a normal, four-legged dog. It was a human, wearing a giant dogsuit. Neon green, with black tiger stripes, like a cheap school’s mascot. She was buying smokes and day-old sandwiches.

Jack came up behind her. “I’ll get it,” he said, taking out his wallet.

“Oh, Jackie babe! Thank you,” she said, her seductive husky voice muffled by the dogsuit head.

“Get a few more,” said Jack. “And anything else you want. It’s on Monroe.”

Surprised, Deb cleared out the rest of the shelves of decent edible food. Jack made a point to remember to bring a care package next time. Deb stuffed her backpack with the goodies.

Deb had ridden a bike, which Jack walked alongside, back to her domain. A dozen nylon tents crowded like a city in the abandoned patch of green that might’ve once been a park. It smelled like a warren and looked worse. Deb’s fursuit was about the cleanest thing around. A couple of fire barrels gave blinding orange light. Crackheads piled like dirty laundry, as the homeless without shelter huddled in nests of discarded bottles and newspapers like broken birds. 

Here, the Masquerade was about as weak as it got, and Jack took off the work gloves and creaked his sore, stubby joints. She took off her doghead. Underneath, her face was a nightmare of bulging veins, bat-like nose, a single veiny red eye, and flappy pink elephant ears. Deb handed or tossed the food to the tents as they passed. Thanks were shouted. A few hugged her.

“I’m guessing Damsel sent you,” said Deb.

“Monroe.”

Her ears twitched.

“I don’t do Nines’ bitchwork anymore.”

“You do the Vent’s,” she said suspiciously.

“I do what I gotta do,” said Jack. “Monroe gets that. He does the same.”

“Most Anarchs around here don’t like that mess that went down in Beverly,” said Deb darkly. “I wouldn’t say his name too loud.”

“It’s Land Hermandad now. Now, a buncha Brujah got the spitting distance to not piss in each other’s breakfast. Besides,” added Jack, “you saying gang warfare is new in these parts?”

Deb stopped in a quiet corner, in front of a newer looking tent of green nylon. She fixed him with her red eye. “I’m just saying what I’m hearing.” Her oversized ears and smile wiggled. “I hear a lot. Anarchs don’t like it when a Ventrue starts profiting. Spells trouble.”

“Think most of us are smart enough to spell trouble on our own.”

Deb chuckled. “I’m guessing you want to hear it? The recording I showed Damsel?”

She crawled into her tent and he followed. There was barely enough room for the two of them to sit side by side. Vampires didn’t sweat or piss or eat food that would rot, but the tent smelled of stale blood, which was nearly as bad.

Deb opened a spotless vinyl bag and took out a heavy recorder. Inside was the rest of her broadcasting equipment — the only thing of value she had. To ask any Nos, they didn’t all live together in a big group home the way other clans thought, but they did tend to live in the sewers, splitting tunnels of domain the way other clans did topside.

“What happened?” asked Jack.

Deb took a deep breath. “I know you and I never really saw eye to eyes.” She smiled at her own joke. “But, we both come from the Prof, and it’s in his name I need to ask for help.”

Jack gestured back to the homeless. “You don’t need to live here,” he said. “Monroe’d be happy to host you, as long as you want. He’d love to have your radio show, too.”

Deb bit her non-existent lips. “Alright, maybe,” she allowed. “But listen to this.”

She rewound the recorder and hit play. It was a piece of her show, _ Deb of Night _ , a late-night talk radio show where she discussed local human news and took callers.

“Hello, lucky number seven,” said Deb smoothly on the recording, “how is your night going?”

“Good evening, Deb,” came another voice. It could’ve been human. Vampire voices weren’t any different, but it was wintery and thickly accented. Eastern European.

“Yes, I think that’s implied by the title of the show,” she said.

The caller chuckled throatily. “Do you ever worry, Deb, that your world is going to end?”

She sighed. “I haven't felt that way since Brad Pitt got married.”

He chuckled again. “Do you have any idea how insignificant you are? When they start devouring the world, you will be but a bloodstain on their capes.”

At this point in the show, Deb understood she was talking to a vampire and not one that meant her any good. “I bet you say that to all the girls,” she said, fear worming into her voice.

“There is a Red Star in the night sky. The blood of mortals and the blood of ages, all will be consumed. They are coming.” As if he hadn’t had his fill of melodrama, he continued with conviction, “The Final Nights are at hand.”

Deb turned off the recorder. With the wind howling outside, in a cramped tent at the base of an overpass, the words felt a lot more threatening. The Final Nights, the last nights before Gehenna.

Jack managed a smile. “Spooky Sabbat.”

Deb wasn’t smiling. “Every now and then, some harebrained Nos will scream Nictuku. Even bogeymen have bogeymen. Nictuku are, supposedly, our clan founder’s  _ true _ blood, a terrible force of unspeakable horror blood bonded to him, who like nothing more than the taste of fresh Nos flesh.” A smile twisted her lips. “At least, that’s the story. A couple Nos go missing without explanation, someone blames Nictuku, we rush to the surface, then inevitably get tired of Obfuscate and hiding and go back underground. This time, a bunch of us have seen something in the shadows. Hideous, full of thorns and barbs, gnashing teeth, wriggling snakes for hair, spiked tails.”

Tzimisce. Ancient blood monsters. Same difference.

“Have your rats seen anything? How many schlachta?”

She grimaced. “They won’t talk about it. They’re too scared.”

“I’ll do what I can,” he said. “And I’ll do it for the Professor.”

Deb’s smile turned watery. “You haven’t heard from him either, have you?”

Jack sighed. The sharp intake of air pierced his heart. “No. Latest Math Class broke up and the youngest ones from UCLA died in Angels. I think he’s gone, Deb.”

Her eyes glistened. “Maybe we should hold a service for him, all his students.”

“Maybe.” He knew they never would. Jack cracked his back and scuttled sideways out of the tent. Deb followed him out. “You go to Monroe,” he insisted. “He’ll set you up with whatever you need — house, money, blood. And don’t let the Nictuku get you.”

She smiled. She could almost look pretty when she smiled. “I’ll try not to. Thank you, I didn’t expect you to help us.”

“Anywhere I should start?”

Deb pointed to the nearest. “Right around here is where Gregor vanished.”

Cursing himself, Jack took the nearest manhole cover and jumped down. It was terrible. Smelled like most Nosferatu. Rotted and rancid, a thick sour stench that crawled up his nose to die there. And wet. The bricked tunnels glowed green with caged fluorescents, several inches of mostly-clear sewage. Jack had once spent the day down here and woke up in several feet of much-less-clear sewage. To save his clothes from being in the sewers twice in a week, Jack turned into a cougar.

Instantly, he growled. Feline fur didn’t like being wet. His paws dragged ripples through the stream.

It didn’t take him long to find a rat. A thin screechy little thing. Jack reached out and the rat understood he wasn’t no cat. Didn’t stop him running away. Jack splashed out a paw and caught the tail.

_ Let me go! Let me go! It’s coming. _

_ What’s coming? _ asked Jack.

_ Hunger. Death. Teeth. _

Eventually, the rat managed to think of some pictures. Just like Deb had said, he had seen crawling shadows against the walls, and the smell-that-was-not-a-smell that animals got when vampires came near, the sense of a predator.

Jack let the rat go and apologized for the tail.

Animals were Clan Nosferatu’s greatest spies and, in Jack’s opinion, the greatest spies period. They didn’t always get the hot information about numbers or colours or spy on conversations, but they knew when danger was coming. This would be the occasion for animal spies. Too bad they were too scared to be useful.

Jack prowled the tunnels a while longer, keeping his eyes and ears open for any shadows. The sewers were weirdly quiet. Normally, they teemed with Nosferatu in neighbouring tunnels, at least spreading ripples, or, upon smelling another vampire, coming out of the darkness to watch.

At first sign, Jack was ready to go invisible. But nothing came. Like Deb said, the Nos had gone topside. First time for everything. At least one dead Nos’s ashes were somewhere, though. That would be a starting point. Washed away, maybe. Maybe bones or clothes or sign of a struggle. Somewhere.

If only the dead could talk.

Ghosts. Jack was an idiot. The dead  _ did  _ talk. He had some middling involvement with ghosts, though he had always relied on Ryuko’s magic. Shouldn’t be that hard. Vampires could work basic magic.

And Jack didn’t need to go hunting for where Gregor had died. He could  _ summon  _ him.

Jack transformed and crawled back up. Home wasn’t too far off. He needed to get some supplies. Excitement threatened to grow in his stomach — danger, discovery, magic arts — and he fell into it. A quick trip home, and he settled himself down at a children’s park next to a sewer entrance by the projects in downtown. Maybe it wasn’t so smart, to do magic topside so close to the Last Round, but he could put Damsel’s wise ass in its place.

Jack did as he had watched Ryuko do hundreds of times as he tried to summon ghosts. He cracked open a book and settled down. If not truly  _ ghosts _ , then the imprints of the dead. Ghosts remained as thinking, living spirits, able to influence from the Shadowlands. Imprints could be summoned from the recent dead, a freeze frame of their last moments.

Jack drew a chalk circle on the ground, overlining each arcane symbol with his own vitae. It wasn’t easy with cougar half-paws. And, there were candles — but they would light with black fire later, when the ghost came. And strings crossed in a symbol for violent death. Poor murdered Gregor. And a pewter goblet for clear water. Then, he slowed the stream of the blood from his hand. One, two, three drops.

That should be it.

Gregor didn’t feel like showing up.

Jack sat back, frowning. He consulted the book. What had he done wrong? He cracked open another book. And another. And, then his journal he had kept when Ryuko did magic.

Maybe, he reflected, this wasn’t a vampire ritual. It was a mage ritual, or at least a human ritual. It wasn’t a nice thought but the more time he gave it, the more right it sounded.

He slammed all his books. The Latin, the Greek, the Japanese occult tomes he kept warm for when Ryuko asked for them back. He threw the books down the sewer. Rancid water seeped into the pages, bleeding ink. Fuck.

_ Fuck. _

Jack knew what he would do before he transformed into a crow and soared high over the city. Higher. Higher than the skyscrapers of downtown, until the ground beneath him was just a million lights, a million diamonds on black velvet, each of them a story and human life. 

A lot more than a couple of Nos were at stake if Tzimisce projects hunted the sewers. He still remembered the Sabbat Siege of the sixties, the chaos they dragged in. On the second night, a new lick to town, who everyone thought was a Caitiff, came to MacNeil and warned him of a strike. In return, MacNeil vouched and people left her alone.

Jack flew higher into Beverly Glen and found the spooky mansion Monroe had somehow thought was cool. Victorian, with a wrap-around porch, and huge bay windows, their drapes pulled tight.

Reluctantly, Jack knocked on the door. Orsay answered it immediately, looking like a blood-dipped white fang. Like older licks, she didn’t blink.

“What do you know about ghosts?” asked Jack bluntly.

Orsay stared. Her red lips curled. “For you, for that tone, nothing.”

She moved to shut the door and Jack caught it.

“Why did you turn?” asked Jack. “You left the Sabbat to join the Anarchs. Why?”

Orsay let the door creak open further. Those red eyes fixed him like glue. “Because the Anarchs were kind. My time as a spy among you gave me hope for myself and my pack — a hope that, while not as fruitful as I once thought, has granted me independence and peace.”

“So you’re not turning back?” he asked, relieved. 

“No,” she said stonily. The door shut in Jack’s face.

Jack scratched his hair. “I’m looking for a ritual to summon a ghost,” he called. “If not a ghost, then an imprint. Not all licks get ghosts, I know, but, even if a creature’s already crossed the Shadowlands, a pathic imprint should be left after they leave the Material again.”

The door opened and Orsay inspected him with a sharp eye. “Who told you those things?”

“A friend,” he said, and tried to stop his fangs from chattering. That glare had his knees knocking in his boots. “The ritual he left me doesn’t work. I need a new one. I don’t need any demo, just a list of ingredients and steps. Like a recipe.”

Orsay gave an expression that, on any other face, would’ve been a smile. “Come in.”

Jack winced but followed her into the spooky house. He was a big bad vampire. He didn’t need to be scared of witches. Then again, maybe, being a vampire, being scared of witches was only reasonable. He knew what they could do. The bone necklaces and rings and hair pins sort of advertised it. Her house was full of similar things in ivory: candlesticks, wine glasses, even painted plates hung on walls. Those could be fine china, but Jack didn’t trust it. They were human bone.

Orsay sat in an old-fashioned parlour, crossing her ankles. “May I get you some refreshment?”

Jack shuffled. Monroe made that stiff old-world thing work for him. It made him look quaint and funny, instead of like a creepy ancient vampire. “Nah, I’m good.”

“Does Captain Monroe not bathe his dogs?” asked Orsay, wrinkling her nose. 

Jack wanted to snap, but that would only prove her point. “I’m not his dog and I’m not here on his business. I was helping some Nos, friends of mine. And you’re a bitch.”

Orsay absorbed the insult with a raised eyebrow. “Bitch? If you intend to keep my assistance in summoning ghosts, you would do well to keep your insults so uncreative. Whose ghost do you seek?”

“A Nosferatu,” said Jack. “Name of Gregor. He died recently.”

Her eyes scoured him. “Hence, the smell.”

He nodded shortly.

“Very well,” she said mildly. “I will allow you a choice, given this unusual turn of events. You can either owe me a major boon, to teach you necromantic rituals that will allow you to summon and communicate with your imprint. Or, at a time of my choosing, I will accompany you myself, perform the rituals, and let you learn from me.”

“Why would you want to come?” he asked, bewildered.

She leaned forward and pursed her lips. “Would it be a sin to admit I find a Cainite apprentice to a mage… curious?”

It was the last thing Jack had expected. “I was never his apprentice.”

“Much of blood sorcery is theory, which, as we have gleaned from your mage, is shared across our kinds — if the methods are rather distinct,” she added wryly.

“He’s not my mage.”

“You know of ghosts, the semi-permanence of the soul’s pathos. What else?” asked Orsay, ignoring him.

Jack wished he felt like a bug under a microscope. Despite her prodding, he felt she was genuinely interested. “I… I’ve managed to do some things. Party tricks, really. I’ve never had any use for them, really.”

“Pity,” she said, looking him up and down. “Theory is the most difficult to teach. If you are competent, I could give you a summoning spell for a local spirit. I would rather be there myself, to assist your attempt.”

Jack frowned. He guessed the Nosferatu, since they were all safe topside, could stay topside for a while longer. He wondered if this was what Ryuko felt the first time meeting the Hollowmen, the itch of greed. Discovery. New magic. “When would it be?”

“I’ll need another week or so to move into Silver Lake,” she said. “Once I’ve settled, I will seek you out.”

“Coming down from the hills?” asked Jack, even more confused. Then, he understood. And he understood enough to keep his mouth shut. The Sabbat were taking out the Nos, to take out spies and eyes, but Orsay would be a sore point — a turncloak, the reason the last siege failed.

She must’ve understood that he understood. His brain was already hurting with half-truths. 

“Yes,” she said. “Azalea will simply have to tolerate my presence that much closer.”

“People change,” said Jack.

Her eyes narrowed, before relenting. “Yes, they do. But, they are my pack, regardless. You are the Jack their newest convert spoke of, aren’t you?”

Jack stiffened and looked away. “What if I am?”

“Then, you have more sense than that pitiful magician you tied yourself to,” said Orsay with scorn.

“He’s more powerful than you,” he snapped, forgetting for a moment how dangerous the two of them really were.

She only smiled. “Yes. Human mages tend to be. Whether they are Lilith’s reincarnated Six Sacred Children, or came across magic by thievery or prayer to the False One Above, it matters little. Your Ryuko, on the other hand, is weak in more ways than magic can amend.”

Jack slipped his face into his hands. “Don’t talk about him,” he said. He meant it to be a threat, but he could barely summon a whisper. “He’s not yours to shit-talk.”

“Come now, feral sorcerer,” said Orsay with a smirk. She stood, her skirts dragging across her floors. She reached for his hands and he flinched away. She took them forcefully, mangled half-paws in a broad pale vise. “We all have family who we are… less than proud of. It does not mean we love them less. I, for one, have always been less than faithful. It is a sore point with my sister.”

Jack gasped, shrill, as Orsay clenched and kneaded his hands. The bones snapped and tendons creaked under stress, reknitting. The black hair fell off, grey and rotten. The nails retracted and reformed. Moments later, through eyes blurry and shaking, his hands were once again whole and human.

Nights of ceaseless feeding and effort to heal. Orsay accomplished it in agonizing minutes.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

“Do not give up on your mage,” said Orsay, sitting next to him. “People, often, have to make poor decisions and suffer before they find themselves again.”

Jack stood. More than his hands felt raw and flayed. “I’ll remember,” he said hastily.

“Come back soon,” she called after him.

Jack vanished into the night on wings, more uncertain and frightened than anything. Orsay had been creepy. But, old-vampire creepy. Not religious-nutcase-Cainite creepy. It should’ve made him feel better, but her confusing attempts at making friends only made him suspicious. Jack wasn’t a suspicious guy by nature. Vampires brought it out in him. He wanted to believe that she just wanted to be friends. Forty years, shunned and isolated, but without the rest of her pack. Ugly and dangerous as they were to outsiders, he guessed he could see the Hollowmen as tight-knit. In their own way.

Maybe Jack knew a thing or two about isolated lonely mages and the rough edges they picked up.

He dropped out of the sky on two legs. It always sucked that whenever he wanted to ride his motorcycle it was always somewhere else. Hunger tingled in his fangs. Jack decided to walk the rest of the way to Blue. It wasn’t a great walk, through Land Hermandad and Brujah turf that smelled more Anarch than most of Switzerland, but it let him inspect his hands closer. They looked normal, felt normal. Like hands. Orsay had done a great thing. And for free.

It was only a whim. The smallest of small whims. To walk on two legs on the ground. Jack had four other shapes to choose from. Later on, he would often wonder how it all would’ve went down if he hadn’t been able to witness it. Even better, if he had gotten there a minute sooner.

Jack walked alongside the overpass, thinking about Charlie. That group she had always looked like they had fun, even if it did seem lame. They hadn’t said more than hello in too long, too.

Someone screamed. But it was not a human scream. Just as desperate, but it broke off into a shrill yelp. A Beast growled. A pistol shot several times.

Jack leaned over the edge. Licks. Maybe a half dozen scrambled and circled each other in the dirt of the construction yard. Most rivalries blew up after a point. Gangs risked their reputations on coming out on top. It was more sport, ego, and pride than practical. Jack never had a taste for it. Occasionally, someone got an injury the Blood couldn’t repair right — busted up ankle or knee, a shot off ear, or heavy head trauma. That wasn’t pretty. 

He kept walking and put the sounds to the back of his mind. Not his business if licks wanted to play cops and robbers. Monroe didn’t have the pull to outlaw it.

Someone else screamed. More desperate. It didn’t sound like sport. It sounded more like Greystone had sounded. Like a  _ fight _ . Growls spat the air.

Jack winced and turned back. He risked another look, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. Headlights behind him threw floodlights down below as cars passed. Patches of the construction yard refused to lighten, looking like waving scarves of black pitch. And he realised what he saw.

He hadn’t even realised he transformed on the roadside until he divebombed the Nosferatu with the gun. He recognised him. The Hollowmen’s. The Nos shot, three, four times. Jack dodged and summoned his dwindling strength to find claws, paws. Him and the Nos tumbled through the dirt, snarling and snapping. The Nos’ own nails scratched burning lines. Jack growled and clamped his jaws over the wrist. Teeth sunk through undead flesh.

The Beast howled, triumphant, as the Nos screamed in pain.

Jack lost control of his form, briefly. Bones cracked and skin rippled. He threw himself into the momentum and found himself a common vampire again. He wrapped his fingers around the Nos’s neck. The Nos flailed and a Potence-fueled fist smacked Jack’s face. He leaned backwards and was lucky to escape with a broken nose.

Jack scuttled backwards. Hunger itched his teeth and he couldn’t risk transforming again. Azalea snarled. The blackness of night — no, beyond night, greater and more terrible than just the absence of light and sun — lashed out like a whip.

But not at Jack.

It found a neck and pulled. The head spun off into the distance, bloodless, like a soccer ball kicked too hard.

A desperate scream pierced the night. Jack found his feet and tackled the man who screamed. It was Orion, just like Jack feared. He snarled and screamed, beyond human reason. He pummeled Jack until he released him, but he only pawed his way across the dry soil to what remained of Jeff Sullivan. 

As Orion screamed, a single desperate note of grief, Jack stood and raised his hands. For the moment, no one moved. Everyone tensed. Jack stepped slowly into the middle, making of himself a barricade. As soon as Orion found his fury again, the fight would continue. Four on two. The Reapers would like those odds, but Jack wasn’t so sure. That Lasombra evened things out. Nos were tougher than most thought.

“Come with me,” said Jack to the Nos and Azalea. “Come with me and stop this. I know you had a reason. You gotta have a reason.”

Jack’s eyes flickered hopelessly. Metal pipes, spools of fencing. Not so much as a two-by-four. Nothing wood. And he had no stake. Not even a gun. Not enough blood to transform again without risking frenzy. How did you subdue monsters like this?

“San Diego’s Anarchs knew their place better than this,” said Azalea coldly. “They knew we were not to be trifled with. Now, these children know that, too.”

“We ain’t going anywhere,” said the Nos in a greasy voice. “We don’t got anything else to say.”

Orion found his voice. “Maybe I do!”

Jack caught the Brujah mid-charge. The momentum pushed them both to the ground. Azalea gave a high laugh.

“You gotta calm down, man,” said Jack desperately. “There’s time to grieve later. Now, right now, we—”

Orion cursed with every word he knew, spluttering and spitting fire when language failed him. The Brujah Beast frenzied against Jack and he pushed the kid into the dirt. Another Reaper took Orion off his hands, for a moment, at least, though they looked like they would jump in next.

Jack stood uneasily. He pulled off his jacket, shaking, and threw it in the dirt. He had precious little energy left to attempt this. Still, he scoured a fang down the length of his forearm. Human blood carried nothing. It was dead, inanimate. Vitae always had power. It was the only trick Jack had mastered, and the only one Ryuko struggled with.

As Jack flung his arm, the blood coiled in droplets like a thin whip. It slapped Azalea in the face, leaving a bright red mark. She blinked, but then her flesh began to sizzle. The shock was enough for her to lose concentration and her shadowy chair failed her, dropping her to the ground. Azalea didn’t shake. But she looked up at him in fear.

“Come with me,” said Jack, struggling to keep his voice level. “Monroe can deal with you.”


	28. Honourable Accord

“You can’t let her live.”

Monroe never appreciated being told what he couldn’t do, but he accepted it from Orion. The desperate keening, the fear, the way he gripped the ceramic cup, he had faith Monroe would do the right thing. He could work with that.

Monroe topped up Orion’s cup of white liquor. The boy sobbed as he drank. 

“Please, man, for — for Jeff,” said Orion. Every word scraped him raw. “ _ Please _ . If you don’t have the fangs, I can do it. Fuck, you know we all can.”

“That’s not justice.” 

It was the first time Monroe had spoken in the last hour, as Jack had dragged Azalea and shuttled the shell-shocked Reapers into Blue Moon. Jack had the unenviable job of holding Azalea in the basement and fending off the growing mob. Ritter had cleared the humans out. As minutes dragged by, almost the entire population of the domain had gathered. Monroe’s job, too, was unenviable. He had to convince Orion to leave Azalea with her life.

Orion shuddered. “Dude. You can’t be getting soft. These — We’re your people. I  _ trusted _ you.”

“And you can still,” said Monroe sincerely. He crouched low, to meet Orion’s gaze steady. “But we are not monsters. I will not start playing ‘eye for an eye’. Trust me when I say that game will never end. It is how the Camarilla has come to be what it is.”

“Then banish her,” he said. Hazel eyes glowed red with angry tears. “All of them. Feed them to the Sabbat, like Charlie promised. Hurt them.”

“Perhaps we should. Perhaps we should also stake and suspend them from the ceiling, to be battered like pinatas and fed on for nights through celebrations,” said Monroe.

“That’s not what I—”

“That’s what the Sabbat will do if they find them. It’s called a Blood Feast, reserved for traitors and enemies of the sect.”

Orion bowed his head, shamed, and Monroe reached out with a hand to turn Orion’s face back to him. Orion was drunk enough to not recognise the cajoling Presence. Monroe was not Ashley. Given the time, he would rather do this with words, but he didn’t have the time.

“You’re a good man,” said Monroe gently. “Let me tell you, honestly, vengeance is not worth it. It lets you know what you are capable of and, long after your target is dead, you will always know what you let yourself become.”

Orion didn’t want to believe it. He shook his head again.

Monroe persisted. “Gang strife is different. Self defence is different. But I cannot let you give into your Beast. It wants so much more than wanton murder. It wants you to be cruel and heartless, to forget what it means to be human.”

“What would you do?” asked Orion in a whisper. “If she killed one of yours? What about Garcia?”

Monroe sighed. “You weren’t here when that went down.”

“And I don’t obey you,” he said thickly, referencing the Rant Monroe had given. “If those bastards are still here at dusk, we’re gonna—” Orion cracked again and took a deep swig from his drink.

“I know,” he said. “I’ll do right by you, and Jeff. I promise.”

Orion stood and wobbled. He took the bottle from Monroe’s hands. “Don’t let me down,” he pleaded. “I… I  _ want _ to trust you.”

The elevator took him back down to the main floor and his waiting gang. Justin and Lloyd would be there to corral them, hopefully. Monroe sighed and felt himself weaken at the seams. What a nightmare.

“So, what exactly did that accomplish?” asked Hawthorne. She had waited in the back hall, listening at the door as he had asked.

“Orion has a seed of doubt. Now, if they believe things go poorly, he will likely take his Reapers and run. Otherwise, I think we would have a Greystone-level riot.”

Hawthorne wrinkled her nose as she sat in Orion’s chair. “And getting him drunk helped with that?”

“Yes,” said Monroe irritably. He felt the tactics far below him, but they were necessary. He would’ve preferred weeks to enact this, but things moved too fast. “Now, what would you do?”

Hawthorne shrugged. “They broke your laws. And, to be honest, you don’t have many. Kill her.”

Monroe groaned. “You need to  _ think _ for a minute. There is a reason Ventrue adopted strategy games. You need to think three, four, five moves ahead. Kill Azalea, what happens?”

“I get it,” she snapped. “Hollowmen take revenge. We have to kill them all.”

“Further,” he insisted.

It took her a minute, but she understood. “The Sabbat. If we kill Orsay and the Lasombra, we have nothing to meet them on even terms. That mage—”

“You are on the right track, but, further.”

“Westside and Valley,” she realised. She sighed. “Fuck. We have no magic to face off Tremere. And, if you start executing people, suddenly you’re looking a lot more Camarilla to these milkfang Anarchs.”

Monroe relaxed and sat on the arm of her chair. “Better,” he allowed. “So, we’ve established some of what we can’t do. Tell me, what do we need to accomplish tonight?”

Hawthorne smirked bitterly and leaned into him. “I really don’t appreciate being taught like some fresh fledgling.”

“You came to me to learn. So learn.” He knew his words bit hard. He wrapped an arm around her and stroked her shoulder. “Regardless what actions we take, what do they need to accomplish?”

“Pacify the Reapers,” she said at once. “Keep the respect of the domain. Eliminate the threat of Hollowmen seeking revenge — which means Azalea needs to accept it.” She shook her head. “This sounds like a magic trick, but I know you already know what you’re going to do.”

“Yes,” he said impatiently, “but I need you to come to the same conclusion. There is one more thing you forgot. The way Anarchs operate, their world is black and white. Us and Them. At Greystone, I only destroyed Garcia because I succeeded in making him a Them and myself an Us. Now, follow your own logic.”

“What would Azalea accept?” asked Hawthorne unwillingly. “She’s ex-Sabbat, she knows might makes right, Darwinian survival. Sabbat know superiority through physical and Cainite domination, but… You can’t have anyone whipped without looking like a Tower prince. You’ll become Them.”

“There might be a piece you’re missing,” said Monroe. But she was close. “The roads. It’s a piece of our history I haven’t elaborated on. Long ago, it used to be very common for kindred to abandon all forms of human virtue and morality to control the Beast with other methods. At the Convention of Thorns, the Camarilla had it writ to only accept those on the Road of Humanity. The Sabbat kept the roads and paths. Azalea is on the Path of Honourable Accord.”

“This doesn’t seem very honourable,” said Hawthorne, frowning. “Killing like a gangster in the night.”

“She was disrespected,” said Monroe simply. “More importantly, she broke her word to me. Why? Honourable Accord is about hierarchy, about leading and following justly, about chivalry, bravery, duty.”

“She doesn’t respect you,” she said, thinking. “And she doesn’t accept the rest of the domain as hers. Then, you have to make her accept you as her superior, but she has to come to it herself.” Hawthorne groaned and pulled back from his touch. “You can’t be serious. This — No.  _ No. _ ”

Monroe stood.

Hawthorne glared but still accepted his hand as they went downstairs. “How sure are you about this?” she whispered.

“Completely,” he lied breezily. Perhaps it was only a feverish plan thought of in the heat of the moment, best slept on and forgotten. He had no time for that. This had to be settled tonight.

Blue Moon had no music, but that did not mean it was silent. More than he had expected had come, not only the usual customers, but also the Hollywood Toreador, the Garcias and La Hermandad. The rest of the Hollowmen, and Orsay. Ryuko glowered in a corner by the bar, given a even wider berth by fearful kindred. They buzzed like wasps. Orion huddled in a group of Brujah, who tended to the browbeaten Reapers. Monroe was relieved to see Justin and Lloyd there, too.

Ritter waited by the bar. Monroe gave him a tense smile. Ritter had notified Jan, or perhaps Jan just knew like Jan knew everything, and would want to see him before dawn.

“Get her out if it goes bad,” said Monroe shortly, texting Jack to come back upstairs.

Hawthorne scoffed. “Not damn likely. There—”

“You died for me once, when I made a poor judgement call. You won’t again. End of discussion.”

Monroe left before she could continue arguing. He felt the eyes on him. A few hollered for his attention. He knew he dangled on the precipice. Anarchs did not know any sense of justice, loyalty, or law and order. One by one, they had begun to remember his origins in the Tower, the clan he bore. They overlooked it because they thought destroying Garcia was their own idea. It could all fall apart again.

The short stage was dark. Monroe sat on the edge and waited. He did not have to wait long. He couldn’t see past the first few rows, but he heard the screams, the boos, the snarls and growls that heralded Jack and Azalea’s arrival.

“Let them pass,” Monroe called.

Reluctantly, they did. The crowd parted and Jack hopped up on the stage. He dropped the staked Azalea and wouldn’t look at Monroe.

“I know what I’m doing,” said Monroe.

Jack’s eyes flickered and he threw down the plastic bag. “I don’t like this,” he said out of the corner of his mouth. “Whatever you know, fuck, man, it’s more than I do.”

Jack hopped off the stage and settled in the front row with the thinbloods. 

Monroe turned Azalea to her back. “Don’t make any sudden movements,” he said. “Lower the shadows. You aren’t here for an execution.”

He pulled the stake out and Azalea couldn’t bite back the pained gasp that escaped her. Staking could be agonizing. Monroe offered himself for a moment of support, but she rebuffed him. Without her shadowy chair, she was pinned to the ground, able only to sit up.

“It is always the same,” she said with a snarl. “Ventrue and Lasombra, once again.”

“I’m not here to play ancient history,” he whispered. “I’m here to rewrite our kind’s future.”

Azalea’s eyebrows twitched in confusion.

Someone thought to turn the lights up. Across the pit and tables and stage, a dim light glimmered from above. 

Showtime.

Monroe stood. He made sure to look them all in the eye. This relied on them understanding the pain and grief and failure he had not allowed himself to feel tonight.

“Thank you for coming,” he said roughly. “I suspect everyone here knows, but if anyone doesn’t, Jeff Sullivan of the Reapers was killed tonight by two of the Hollowmen, Erik Morgan and Azalea. Jack Shen happened to come across the fight towards its end. Tonight has moved fast. If you have questions, go ask him.”

“I got a question,” shouted Midnight. “Why the  _ fuck _ did you let ex-Sabbat kill a baby Caitiff?”

Approving murmurs and indistinct shouts joined her. Monroe waited for them to calm.

“I failed,” he admitted. “I accepted the Hollowmen for the same reason I took in the Reapers, the Deathsingers, the Alchemists. The same reason MacNeil took me in. Hope. Hope that we can be better, that our pasts don’t need to define our futures.”

Monroe raised a hand to indicate the Brujah, who, for once in the clan’s recent memory, did not join the majority in the mosh pit. “Orion. You speak for the Reapers, those who knew and loved your brother best. Tell me, what do you want done with the Hollowmen?”

“I want them to stay the fuck away from us,” he spat. He still clung to his bottle. 

“Do you want her dead?” asked Monroe. He needed the answer. Everyone needed to hear it.

“No,” said Orion wetly. “I want her to suffer. And I want her to… go.”

“The Hollowmen make their homes in Los Feliz,” said Monroe. “I believe you moved the Reapers to Land Hermandad. Is that enough room?”

Orion wiped his mouth and nodded. His men looked horrified, but none argued.

At the bar, Azalea’s childe, Flores, and the Gangrel Silas looked like they had just won the lottery. Ryuko’s eyes narrowed and he crossed his arms. Monroe did not care for the mistrust. They would obey their leader. The Anarchs and Sabbat had that in common, at least. Azalea was the one who needed to acquiesce. 

Monroe raised his voice again. “In every domain, there exists a contract. Here, it is simple. I give you a reason to obey. I will protect you, if you follow my laws. Anyone here knows this. They aren’t a thick tome with loopholes. They are common sense shit. Follow me, and I will give you sanctuary, provide you with what you need to thrive. This contract has been broken — both ways.”

He reached for the plastic bag he had asked Jack to pick up. Monroe’s first action had been to ask for a mediocre favour from Jan: a tough leather bullwhip. Even Barty’s court had one. Kindred weren’t punished for breaking the Traditions by jail time or fines. The Camarilla, as always, lived centuries in the past.

It felt coarse and unfamiliar in Monroe’s hands. It was not a Ventrue way to be so physical, but it had to be him. He could not Dominate her into self-abuse. Azalea would never respect him for it. But pain would be a lesson the Sabbat knew well.

The air soured. More than a few laughed openly. Most, as he knew, recognised it as a tool of Camarilla tyrant justice. And they hated him for it, as much as they gleefully anticipated bloody vengeance on the Reapers’ behalf. The Reapers were Us.

“Azalea will suffer,” he promised. “She has broken this contract. We are here to live together, peacefully, and she failed us all.”

Azalea had no fear. In fact, she was one of those who laughed. Perhaps the Sabbat taught the same lessons the Camarilla managed to: endurance. One of the Reapers, anxious to move things along, called Monroe’s name and threw him a chair. Monroe caught it and forced Azalea to her knees over it. She gripped the legs, still chuckling. He took off his jacket and tossed it aside.

Monroe found a certain amount of self-respect in how much he loathed what came next. Without anymore preamble, he stepped back and swung. The leather cut through her blouse like silk. Technique was unnecessary. All he sought was pain. Greying skin parted bloodlessly as her blouse turned to shreds. Bones cracked audibly. Fifteen brutal strokes, he put his own rage and frustration into them.

Even if they were Anarchs, they were only vampires. The scent of the blood and the tiny gasps through gritted teeth Azalea released instead of screams hypnotized them. When Monroe turned back to the crowd and asked them to take their turn, many eagerly turned up. One by one, Monroe’s Themness vanished as they absolved him of his sins with their own participation.

The Reapers came, one by one. Orion could barely stand on his own, but he managed a few. The Deathsingers, close as they were to the Reapers, came next. And it became a shared sin of the domain. Representatives from different coteries came: one of Abrams’ Silver Eagles, Miranda Garcia, even Ashley Swan. The Hollowmen watched with humiliated fury.

Monroe kept a close eye on Azalea. It would all be worthless if the trauma forced her to Final Death. She didn’t pass, but it came close. When Ashley stepped off the stage, Azalea slipped off the chair, her wounds still open.

Monroe dropped the whip. He had to commend the domain that, despite it all, the cold unfriendly air had not changed. It was vengeance, not sadism, that drove it. No one celebrated.

“No one here can forget tonight,” he said. “No one. I don’t ask for much, from any of us. What I do ask, I mean. Do not kill. Do not expose our kind. Do not abandon your childer. You do not need to embrace your neighbours as bosom friends, but you  _ will _ treat each other with respect, like vampires that were once human.”

Monroe could tell his words made little to no impact. Those softer ones who had been frightened by the display of blood and pain shirked away. “Tear away the sects. The Camarilla, the Anarchs, the Sabbat. Tear them all away, like we have here, and what is left? Humanity, chained by the Beast and no other. We all need blood, purpose, connection with our fellow kindred. The ancient blood gods envy us — because they have learned to live alone. The methuselah stand apart. The elders stand against each other. Their childer must stand together. We will not survive elsewise. We will not thrive.”

Azalea had flickered back to consciousness and struggled to sit. She watched.

He prided himself on how he succeeded on hiding the tremor in his voice and fingers as he undid the buttons on his shirt. “You do not live here for the enduring stability of the Tower, or the caustic freedom of the Movement, or the primal faith of the Sword. You live here because I am one of you. So as we succeed together will we suffer together.

“When this contract is broken, you will own it. And I will own it with you.”

Dress shirt open, Monroe knelt beside Azalea. She found life to put back on her eyes, but it was vulnerable, frightened — of him, of the unknown in him. The threat his words posed to her.

“Cousin,” he said tenderly, but loud enough for the kindred to hear, “I forgive you. I failed you as much as I did the Reapers. You did not trust me to help you settle your problems. We are not brothers and sisters. We are cousins of the same Blood. All of us. We have chosen to band together and we have chosen to stay. You are mine. But I am yours. You are no different.”

He gave her the whip. She dropped it.

He put it back in her hands.

“Why?” he demanded. “Why not? You played and tormented and killed my people — you might as well do it to me. Their blood  _ is _ my blood. Now, get up and make me suffer.”

Monroe had never thought he could strike fear into a member of the Sabbat, but it was too easy. She wavered, eyes wide. This wasn’t her world, how things were done. There was no precedent for this. It was a joke. He didn’t mean it. He would call it off.

The chair lost its shadows as Azalea rebuilt her chair. She floated to her typical height, legs dangling, still fearful, still holding the whip. 

“Come on,” he shouted. “Come on. This was more my failure than hers.  _ I _ did not protect my people.  _ I _ let them war, under my nose.  _ I _ am responsible for Jeff’s death, because I let it happen. And how dare I. I deserve to suffer, to own my failure, just as she has.”

Monroe crossed himself over the chair, gripping the legs as Azalea had. 

A pin could have dropped on the roof and been heard. Only Ritter’s breathing could be heard.

Her first strike was tentative, though it hurt.

“Were you reared by Toreador or Sabbat?” cursed Monroe. “Am I a ghoul, paying penance for losing the drycleaning, or an ancilla—”

Azalea found her strength in shadow. The icy unnatural touch powered by Potence sliced to the bone effortlessly. He grunted and dug runs through his palms. It was only pain. And it was necessary. He did not block it with Fortitude or heal, as was instinct, but let the lashes rain. He absorbed the pain and drifted inwards.

No one lasted as long on him as they did on Azalea, but they did come. Monroe was sure some took it out on him for other slights. He could get a full list from Ritter later, but he was certain Abrams’ man came again, as well as Ashley, and at least one Garcia. He felt their anger, directed at him, their grief and misery — and he was the cause of it.

As a whole, they were uncertain, as disturbed as Azalea. Leaders — princes, archbishops, barons, captains — did not do this. They were Them, an Other above their followers, made of different stuff.

It was crucial she understood. And she did.

Monroe tore himself from the position of her leader. And she put him back.

They all did.

Someone new jumped on the stage.

“No,” said Azalea in a hard voice. “He’s not paying it to us.”

“But—”

“Anyone else want a turn?” she called.

Silence was her answer.

Gently, more gently than Monroe thought shadows capable of, thick tendrils pulled him to his feet. He winced at every movement of his back. It was only pain, but the most excruciating of his life. He met eyes with Azalea and she bowed her head. Cringing, Monroe cupped the back of her head and pulled her close.

“Thank you,” she said. The words, nonsensical, had a sentiment she was clearly at a loss for. “Cousin.”

“You are home, if you want it,” he said. “But you need to treat it like it is.”

“We will.”

And that was when he noticed who she had stopped. It was Silas, Azalea’s own gang, come to take retribution for her pain and humiliation.

Monroe faced the rest of the domain. He blinked against the blackness in his vision, struggling to make out faces past those in front of him. Rubio crossed himself. Jack’s mouth gaped.

“This matter is closed, unless anyone has something to say,” he dared. No one did. “Someone turn the goddamned music on. The rest of the night is for remembering Jeff Sullivan, for healing what remains.”

Monroe hopped off the stage and bit back a sharp cry as Jack caught him. “I’m fine,” he muttered. “Don’t—”

Jack shook his head. “Man, I—”

“Keep an eye,” said Monroe through gritted teeth. He leaned back against the stage for support. “Nothing more will happen tonight, but people knowing you’re keeping an eye on things will make them feel better.”

“How do you know that?” asked Jack desperately. “They’re not normal. What if…”

He let Monroe lean on his shoulder. Someone started music, a radio channel of grunge rock. The crowd parted like the Red Sea to let them pass. Monroe saw in them the same disturbed respect and fear he saw in Azalea’s eyes. 

“Because I do. I didn’t before. I made a mistake. I—”

“They could’ve killed you,” said Hawthorne. To those who did not know her well, she might’ve sounded dreadfully bored. 

“Let go of Ritter before you strangle the life out of his poor arm,” said Monroe.

She smiled and released him. Monroe gave her his hand and she strangled that, instead. His thumb stroked her hand. Subtly, Jack excused himself with a muttered word and dodged back off to watch the Brujah.

“Tonight?” Monroe asked Ritter, who nodded stiffly. He was the only one in Blue to not look at him with that fear and respect. Instead, it was nothing short of shock.

Jan wanted to meet with him.  _ Prince of Los Angeles _ . Monroe quite thought he was living up to an expectation, even if it wasn’t what Jan first desired.

“Monroe!”

“Captain!”

“Fuck, you look like shit.”

“Shut up. That’s—”

“He  _ literally _ brought it on himself—”

“Maybe we should let a bunch of Brujah go ham on you with a whip, see how you look.”

Monroe cringed and backed against the bar as Justin and Lloyd argued their way over with the others. They looked like they might hug. Charlie offered a weak high five, which he let her have. A different fear lingered in her eyes and touch.

“I was never in any danger,” he promised.

Lloyd slapped Charlie on the back. Monroe winced in sympathy pains.

“You gotta trust the captain,” he said. “Even when he’s digging his own grave, it’s actually an escape tunnel.”

“That was hardcore,” said Justin appreciatively. “Up top.”

With a wry smile, Monroe engaged in a fist bump.

“I… I felt it,” whispered Charlie. She gnawed her lips until they greyed utterly. “Through the Cobweb… I know you aren’t Malkavian, but I—” She got control over herself again. “You got bits of leather in your wounds.”

Zachary Grimes and Red appeared from the crowd, looking just as ostensibly bored as Hawthorne. It fooled no one. Zachary had a tick about scratching through his hair. Now, it stood on end and he made no attempt to hide it. Red clung to him as tightly as Hawthorne had Ritter.

“That was quite something,” said Zachary tensely. “I can see what you meant, when you said I wouldn’t be coming to an Anarch Free State  _ or _ a Camarilla princedom.”

“Our Los Angeles, when the dust settles, will look different,” said Monroe. “I’m learning.”

“Whatever it is you’re learning, it’s going fast,” said Red.

Lloyd, too, saw through her fear and pulled her away with a one-armed hug. “Red girl, there’s nothing to be so worried about.” 

“Yeah,” said Justin. “Our biggest worry should be getting those bits of leather out of the ground meat that the shadows turned his back into.”

“I’ll deal with that tomorrow,” said Monroe. “I need my… My clothes.”

A rush of Celerity, Lloyd crossed the floor, only knocking one thinblood to the floor, and returned with Monroe’s discarded clothes. He buttoned it overtop the bloodless wounds. The brush felt like the sun itself.

“What do you mean ‘tomorrow’?” asked Charlie with narrowed eyes.

“I’ll see you all tomorrow,” said Monroe. “I had something I needed to accomplish tonight and, night willing, might still get around to.”

“Not after that shit,” said Lloyd, outraged. “Dude.”

“Let’s get you a drink — a  _ lot _ of drinks,” said Justin. “Heal those wounds up and you’ll feel a hella lot better.”

“Not tonight,” said Monroe in a different voice. It was a voice each of them had learned to listen to, in their own ways. He gave Hawthorne’s hand one more squeeze before calling Ritter.

But this night had one more surprise for him.

If Monroe had been in a right mind, when he had stood on the stage after his own suffering, he would’ve made a count. He would’ve determined who had moved, to whip him, to get better line of sight, who had left. He hadn’t.

Ashley Swan waited for him in the parking lot, hands in the pockets of his designer jeans, his face unreadable. “Going somewhere?”

“Nowhere you need to be concerned about,” said Monroe.

Ashley snorted. “Oh, that’s lovely. I’m not concerned at all, now.” He looked him up and down. “Just tell me. Where are you going?” He stepped close enough to make Ritter stiffen. “Be the man that all of them in there think you are.”

“I’m going to feed,” he said in a low voice, as though shamed. “I am in a lot of pain right now and I don’t hunt where I live.”

“Let me come with you.” Ashley smiled coldly. “I know all the best spots and—”

“What did you do to Charlie?” demanded Monroe.

It had the desired effect. Ashley raised an amused eyebrow and licked his lips.

“Nothing she didn’t want.”

“Want.” He nodded. “Before or after you messed with her mind?”

“It’s none of your business,” said Ashley softly. He inclined his head. “Is your little girl not speaking to you? Or do you not trust what comes out of her mouth?”

“I trust her just fine. It’s you I don’t.”

“I’m hurt,” he said blithely. “Utterly unfounded and—”

“Did you whip me?” asked Monroe, hoping to batter conversation away from Ritter or where he was going.

Ashley didn’t even miss a beat. “Half those people in there took a swing at you. Some to test, to see if you’d let them. Others to take their own pains out on you. Some just really wanted to see you suffer.”

“Which are you?” he asked.

“All of them,” he drawled. “You on your knees, shirtless and bloody, is the stuff of my dreams. But, why are you not taking your… brood to hunt with you, in this vulnerable time?”

“I never take anyone.”

“You never hunt.” Ashley glanced to Ritter, just long enough for Monroe to know that he knew something he shouldn’t. “Ventrue are so uptight,” he said lightly. “You don’t even want a partner to help you feed. My feelings are hurt.”

“You have no feelings,” said Monroe.

Ashley chuckled fondly, backing away. “You’re wrong. I feel hungry, happy, horny, and, most importantly, helpful. Think fast.” He took a flask from within his jacket and threw. It bounced off the ground with a clink. “Can you drink it? I know you Ventrue have such sticky dietary restrictions.”

Monroe uncorked the steel flask. It was blood. Even smelled orphan, though definitely human.

“What’s so helpful about this?” he asked.

“Trust  _ me _ a minute. Drink.”

“I said—”

“And I said  _ drink _ .” Ashley smiled again.

The Dominate powered through Monroe’s battered mind. He had nothing left to resist. He didn’t even have the energy left to be angry. Monroe tipped the flask to his lips. He was so wrapped up in the taste, he almost missed it. He spat half of it back out.

Ashley laughed and sidestepped. “Mercy me, I should’ve told you to swallow.”

The human who once had this blood was dead. They had overdosed, on some powerful sedative. The drug helped with the pain, but another few mouthfuls and Monroe wouldn’t have gotten back up for days.

Monroe tried to hand back the flask, but Ashley pushed it aside. “Keep it.”

“Thank you,” said Monroe sincerely.

Ashley spun around. “Who, me?”

He managed to smile. “I said it once. I won’t again.”

Ashley glanced to Ritter. “Maybe you should’ve said something else. Have fun… feeding.”

Monroe was too preoccupied by the temporary relief in the blood. In the silence of the car, he sipped again, wincing, as Ritter drove to the preordained location. The bond did strange things to kindred, though making Ashley Swan show genuine compassion had to be up there. Given his comments, Monroe would not have been surprised if it was jealousy, if Ashley suspected Monroe wanted privacy to feed on Ritter. Poor ghoul. After Hawthorne, he should’ve had at least a decade off that duty.

Monroe lowered the flask and felt something. A change in balance. So subtle he might’ve missed it, should’ve missed it. He latched the flask shut and shook. There was not only liquid inside. So much for assuming the best of Ashley.

“Stop the car,” said Monroe.

Grimacing, he took several steps out until he stood over a storm drain. Perhaps Ashley just wanted to be helpful. A bond could twist people in unusual directions. Monroe slowly poured the blood down the drain. The less liquid, the more pronounced the feeling. He let the last of the drugged blood trickle through his fingers. And, at the bottom, something else came out.

A pebble. Smaller than a small fingernail, soaked with blood, but engraved. Was Monroe supposed to have drunk it? It felt ordinary, but it must’ve been magic of a sort. He handed it to Ritter, who offered a handful of napkins.

“What is this?” asked Monroe, wiping his hands clean.

“A lodestone, sir,” he said promptly. “Traditionally used by Clan Tremere, they are prepared via thaumaturgical ritual and rely upon the Discipline Auspex to transmit to the determined master the lodestone’s location.”

Monroe felt a flicker of irritation and wondered if this was what people felt like when they spoke to Ventrue. “It’s a tracker.”

“Yes, sir.”

Not unexpected, but surprisingly clever. He had to ask Orsay if she knew how to make them and had taught Ashley. If Ashley had a Tremere pipeline, it was certainly Camarilla.

Monroe tucked the lodestone back in the flask and passed it to Ritter. “Change of plans. Call Jan and tell him where I am. You are going to go to Hollywood. Stay with the car.”

Ritter slipped back behind the wheel and continued to drive. “Yes, sir.”

“Ashley will, no doubt, catch up to you eventually. Say I am feeding. You don’t know where. If he becomes violent, your first priority is your own life,” said Monroe clearly, so there could be no misunderstanding.

It went contrary to every precedent Ritter likely knew. He frowned deeply. “I don’t understand, sir.”

“I do not want you to lay down your life for mine,” said Monroe. “It’s not how I operate. And especially not for a lie.”

Ritter’s frown only deepened. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear originally, sir. Mr Pieterzoon has gifted you my service, in every capacity. I serve you as I do him. He would not sorrow or grow upset should I die in your service, sir.”

What a bleak existence.

“Anton,” said Monroe sternly, “your position is that of an aid: driver, contact to Jan, assistant to Miss Hawthorne. ‘Human shield’ is not in your job description.”

Ritter licked his lips, as though to speak, several times before he smiled in a thin curt line. “Perhaps ‘ghoul shield’.”

“I mean it,” he warned.

“I understand. Thank you, sir.”

He clicked his heels and returned to the car. It sped off into the black of night.

For some reason, Monroe found the idea of a clever and suspicious Ashley more comforting than a helpful one. He was more dangerous, but Monroe could respect him more — and himself, for not twisting Ashley to that degree. 

It took a minute, but a nondescript black SUV pulled up to the corner and the back door opened. Gratefully, Monroe took the seat opposite. Aside from passing polite meetings at elysium, they hadn’t spoken since New Years. The car was silent and, with Jan’s presence, claustrophobic. 

“How are you?” asked Monroe tersely as the car slid smoothly away from the curb.

Jan gave a tiny shake of his head. “Young Mr Ritter told me of how tonight passed.”

There was scarcely ever emotion in his voice. There wasn’t now, but Monroe couldn’t help but hear disappointment.

“Your assistance in this matter has been greatly appreciated—”

“Did you heal it?” asked Jan. “Let me see.”

Monroe hadn’t expected Jan to ask it in that tone, with that ironic gleam in his eye, and he realised what Jan thought it said about him. “I’m not proud of it,” he insisted. “It is a matter of necessity. Healing will take several nights, more blood than—”

“If you are not proud, you would not be making so many excuses.” The corners of his mouth tilted. “Let me see. Please.”

He did as he was asked and stripped to the waist, turning his back. Ventrue were scarcely whipped by Camarilla courts. It was a discipline used on Anarchs and low clans. Ventrue matters were dealt with behind closed doors, which only served to make other clans loathe them. The weight of Jan’s eyes stole his pride. For his limited time, Monroe felt he could not have done better.

Jan touched the marks and pulled at something, making Monroe hiss and jump.

“Remove the fibers before you heal the skin over,” advised Jan in a quiet voice. “Don’t leave them to corrupt.”

Jan sat back and Monroe felt permission to redress.

“What would you have done?” asked Monroe humbly.

“If a member of my domain murdered another? Death. There is no other. Human customs cannot be extrapolated to tame the Beast. Ramifications for her death should’ve been crossed when they came.”

“You think I made the wrong decision,” he said, thinking about Hawthorne’s instinctive answer and how similar they were.

Jan gathered himself. “I think you made a decision I, and I don’t believe any other, would. That does not make it wrong. It makes it different. New. Kindred are not a race accustomed to newness.”

“Every night, I feel I’m rewriting the book,” confessed Monroe, echoing what he had told Azalea. “Anarchs, ex-Sabbat, Camarilla expats. When was the last time Lasombra and Ventrue cooperated? And, now, aside from my inner circle, I consider her perhaps my staunchest supporter.”

“Be careful with the Sabbat, former or current,” said Jan. “This experiment has no precedent, which means I can only counsel caution.”

“She’s mine,” said Monroe, convinced. “A follower of the Path of Honourable Accord, she has accepted me as her superior.”

Jan did not like that. “And your other Lasombra?”

“Which one?” asked Monroe with a small smile. “I have several.”

“Careful,” said Jan again, harder. “The hunter, the Ace of Spades. All information I have of her indicates a rabid animal.”

Monroe felt the air flow out of his sails and he sat back. “A rabid animal put on a leash and gone into hibernation.”

“Have you blood bonded her?” Jan’s voice cracked harder than the whip.

He bowed his head. “No.”

“Then, she is on no leash. Her hibernation is by choice and suits her, for the moment. It can change. Prepare yourself for the fallout. Utilize your asset as long as you have her.”

Monroe thought of Harper and Charlie, how they seemed to reach an equilibrium with their little game, laughing and smiling as young people should. And Monroe understood, with a sudden and painful clarity, why the Camarilla princes he had long loathed had been so loathsome. Peaceful, happy people were harder to control.

Pragmatically, Monroe knew he ought to stop the relationship, let Charlie grow away from something so useful, and use Harper as the scourge and assassin she had been for years. As Garcia had thought. He knew he couldn’t. Rather, he could and even might, but did not want to be someone who did.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, because he had nothing else to say.

Jan, however, had not finished. “That hunter will be the least of your worries, if this goes as poorly as I expect it will. In no Anarch Free State, anywhere in the country, is there a Ventrue baron. Many Ventrue take spots in domains as recluses, or even consider themselves barons ruling over their broods, but nothing like yourself. Tonight… If you want my honest opinion, it will not help you.”

“Because of tonight, the Anarchs accept me,” said Monroe savagely. “ _ All _ of them. Before tonight, I was just accumulating refugees who saw protection if they lived in my shadow. Now, they will follow me —  _ willingly _ . I won their respect.”

“Princes who need the love and approval of their subjects become intensely vulnerable,” said Jan. He crossed his hands, eyes hard and scouring.

Monroe did his best to not react.  _ Prince of Los Angeles _ .

“I’ve never needed people to love me,” he said. “I’ve gone one and a half centuries without, I can do it again.”

“What, then, was your human mask about?” asked Jan. “Why were you so attached to mortal celebrity if not for love?”

He let his head fall against his hands. The words cut deep with their truth. At first, it was a side effect of his true fulfilment with Blue Moon, then it became convenient to feed. But Monroe had not cultivated it with journalists and tabloids and social media for convenience.

It frightened him that Jan could know him so keenly.

“If you know your weaknesses, you can control them,” said Jan, more kindly. “Our clan is privy to far worse weaknesses than approval. Hunger for power, domination, greed, cruelty, arrogance.”

Monroe chuckled dryly. “Perhaps the clan shouldn’t be pursuing and grooming for power, then.”

Jan’s kindness faded, like moonlight passing behind a cloud and leaving his face in darkness. “No,” he said. “True, many of our cousins  _ do _ pursue power, but it is not our purpose. Do not mistake power with responsibility. You do not have power. Executed with dignity, you carry the responsibility to serve your people. They will respect you and perhaps even like you. Break that responsibility, fall victim to Ventru’s Beast, and you will have power instead. They will obey you and nurse the hatred of their yoke. It may take decades or centuries, but even Ventrue tyrants will fall one night.”

Monroe fought the urge to dismiss the advice out of hand. He had no interest in being a tyrant. Successfully, he had shut out Ventru’s Beast for thirteen decades. He would manage. But one did not argue with an archon who felt he was delivering life-changing insight.

“Thank you, Jan,” he said sincerely.

As though Jan heard his innermost thoughts and feelings, he only smiled. “Tell me, then, how your Toreador pet managed to get his hands on a lodestone.”

Monroe gathered himself to give an answer he knew neither of them would like.

“I don’t know. I hope it was the Tzimisce, Orsay Grimaldi.”

“You hope it was the Tzimisce,” said Jan, disbelieving.

He smiled without humour. “I’m rewriting what it means to run a domain.”


	29. Daughter of Janus

Zari couldn’t help but laugh when she found the card. It had been hand delivered, pushed under the door in a red envelope. She had no delusions about who had written it. Mercurio was not the master spy he thought he was. Unlike her, she reflected dimly.

The card was heavy linen stationary, but had been scrawled over with a ballpoint pen.

_ Dearest Miss Herald, it would be my honour to meet you personally. I expect nothing from you and will accept it gladly. I understand the risk you could be undertaking by following an anonymous message. Feel free to bring back-up. I will not be offended. _

An address and time, not far off, were printed much more clearly on the back. Below that, though, was a poem.

_ I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries _

_ the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, _

_ and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose _

_ from the earth lives dimly in my body. _

Zari hoped Mercurio hadn’t wrote it himself. She didn’t know if she could stand a lovestruck poet ghoul. She caught sight of her nails, the purple wine colour, and grimaced. He probably just thought it was romantic. He wasn’t an idiot. Actually, according to the prince, he was pretty competent. He had more than hot air in his lungs.

Zari retreated to her closet. As herald, she was expected to attend elysium nightly for a certain length of time. Unfortunately, no one had seen fit to quantify that. It was measured in social standing. Perhaps she could be fashionably late.

The prince had the foresight to give his Toreador herald an apartment with ample closet space. Most of it was new acquisitions, sleek businessware in neutrals that made Zari look like Therese’s secretary. The selections at the back, the dresses and skirts and crop tops, felt like they belonged to a different person. Zari had worn that yellow sparkly thing when Velvet took her to her first party in Beverly Hills. They had shared Clint Eastwood, almost killed him. That net top Delilah had bought her after she had lost Zari’s favourite necklace. She had made it up to her with wild night in Vesuvius. A faded bloodstain marked the collar.

Two months in Westside had done what three years telling herself she had escaped, yet not going anywhere, hadn’t. She was free. At last.

She crumpled the stained shirt and the memories in a fist. Why, then, did it feel so shit?

She shoved the thoughts away, deep down, and got ready. Zari figured she might as well give Mercurio a show. He wouldn’t know a vintage Alexander McQueen. Men never did. To Mercurio, it was only plum and off the shoulder. Maybe he would notice the vines embroidered in black, but he would be looking at her legs, her cleavage. On a second thought, Zari wore heels, too, putting her at over six feet. She wouldn’t bring backup but he didn’t need to know that.

But Zari couldn’t shake the idea that Mercurio had been put up to it, or the prince used him to test if Zari was weak to romance like any flitting Toreador, or someone worse had plans for her.

Before she left, she slid a handgun into her handbag.

The address led her to a working part of Santa Monica, off the beaten trail. Storefronts hung signs advertising leases. Old businesses left sunburned shadows of their block letterheads. Only a gas station and a Mexican restaurant had any signs of life. A homeless woman sheltered with her cart against the wind.

Zari checked it again and again. The address was the end of the stripmall, its windows papered over with brown from within. It had once been Millie’s Diner, according to the sign left behind by the last owners. The lease offer didn’t appear tempting.

If he went out of his way to write crap poetry, Zari had at least expected something more… Something.

She should’ve worn higher heels.

Reluctantly, she left the car and strutted up to the address. With a hand on the gun in her bag, she knocked.

Mercurio opened. Zari had to admit he didn’t clean up well. Too much gel in his hair, it looked greasy. The suit was nice, but he still wore that gold chain necklace. And no one could do anything about that chin or nose. It didn’t disappoint her. It was what she had expected.

He just stared at her, but it didn’t feel creepy or desperate. With his eyes, he memorized every inch. “Wow,” he breathed. “You — uh — You’re early, miss.”

“To be early would mean things haven’t started yet,” said Zari with a smile. “I am here. Things start.”

Mercurio chuckled. “As you say.”

“Are you gonna invite me into your… condemned cafe?”

“Do kindred need invites now?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No, but they’re nice.” She fished the card from her bag. “This was nice.”

He smiled and blushed to the ends of his ears. “Welcome to the Condemned Cafe, Miss Herald.”

She stepped past him. “Every time we meet, I think I tell you to call me Zari.”

“That’s right, Miss Herald,” he said, knowing. Knowing she would rather the distance and respect of the title.

But Zari couldn’t appreciate it. She was too busy staring at the cafe. The previous owners had cleared it out entirely, but the bones remained: that familiar off-white tiles, a counter on the back wall with display cases for pastries, doors back to the kitchen and restrooms. White table clothes and rose petals covered the counter and small ink green bottles of blood chilled in the display case. Fairy lights draped from the ceiling. A single table for two had been set with flowers and electric candles. A CD player crooned and Zari recognised the song from the mixed tape. 

It was so simple. And gaudy. And beautiful in its thoughtfulness. 

“I know Valentine’s is another week away,” said Mercuio, “but I didn’t wanna wait. Here.” He pulled out one of the chairs for her.

Lost for words, Zari sat.

Mercurio rushed behind the counter. “How would you feel about a drink? I got a Venom Smash and an Applemate.”

“What?” Zari laughed, turning. 

He held up last October’s copy of  _ The Fifth Estate _ , when Zari had tried to mend things with Alice Zhao and had her write up a piece on bloodtails. Mercurio clearly had an idea about how he wanted tonight to go. Harmless to play along.

“Applemate, please,” she said.

Mercurio got to it, mixing and measuring. Zari knew Alice spent most of her nights hunting and tapping prey with strong resonances in their blood. He had put a lot of effort into tonight.

He also had read her zine. She hated the feeling it brought up in her.

At last, Mercurio poured it into a hot steel cup. He took for himself a can from a six pack and joined her at the table. She sipped, almost embarrassed by his attention. Alice’s were better but Zari missed the complex nuances of her drinks. The Applemate was floral and crisp, sweet with a dry finish.

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s great.”

Mercurio visibly relaxed and popped the tab on his beer. “Great. That’s great. Are you — I mean, I was the one sending you those cards and stuff. Did you know?”

Zari smiled. “No.”

He grinned, but softened quickly. “Are you disappointed?”

“No.” She didn’t know if it was a lie, too. It wasn’t the full truth, at least. “Why didn’t you just… talk to me?”

Mercurio flushed and coughed. “I — uh, I don’t like to talk about this sorta stuff around ladies, but I know the big man, he told me you guys don’t…  _ do _ … intimacy. I needed to know if you were interested in that sorta thing.”

Zari bit back a snicker at the idea of the prince giving his ghoul the sex talk. “I am,” she said, “but why were you so interested in me, from day one?”

“He didn’t ask me to,” said Mercurio swiftly. Too swifty. So fast, either because LaCroix had, or because Mercruio had genuinely wanted to. She did not know which was worse. Mercurio twiddled his drink. In the empty enclosed room, she could smell the start of sweat before it glistened on his hairline. “You probably don’t remember, but that first night? When he had me drive you to the apartment building, you asked me my name, we talked. You thanked me, smiled, and called me ‘sir’.”

She remembered that. “You laughed,” she said. It was before she had learned ghouls were not allowed in elysium, that, while, every Camarilla lick had at least one, they were never seen. Among some Anarchs, at least, ghouls could be friends.

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Mercurio hurriedly. “I’m not desperate for a kind word. I’m tough, I got hot-blooded contacts in LA that can smile at me all day—”

“I’m not kind to ghouls very often,” said Zari. The words left her before she could think them over. They shamed with truth her coming out. Every ghoul she had ever had, once they irked her conscience, she had given to Ashley. He made it his life’s mission to eliminate obstacles to his childer’s happiness. “I don’t want you thinking I’m something I’m not.”

Mercurio sighed in a familiar sort of way. “We all got dark chapters.”

“I’m so tired of darkness,” said Zari wearily. It felt like a sinful confession. “I’m sick of it. They never tell you just how  _ boring _ it is — being happy, getting your way, having every human in ten miles love you, open to you mind and soul with a couple of words. And I’m sick of the moral hangover.”

Mercurio hesitated, but he reached out for her hand wrapped around the glass. She didn’t let go to hold his, so he just stroked her knuckles.

“Me, too,” he said.

“You don’t understand,” she said defensively.

Mercurio flinched from her words and settled back. “Don’t I? There is as much difference between me and humans as there is between you and me. Do you think the prince has me running drycleaning  _ every _ night?” His voice was soft and hurt, but his words struck.

Zari struggled to pull away from his eyes. “Whatever LaCroix has you do,” she said in a hard voice, watching him snap back at the sound of his master’s name, “it’s between you two, but you’re bonded to him. How do you think this is going to work?”

“As well as it can,” said Mercurio. “For as long as it can, however it can.”

The undaunted soft determination made her shrink inwards. The touch of his hands still burned on her fingers. The idea that it was real was too much to bare.

“I don’t know anything about you,” said Zari, shaking her head. And that was the way it should stay, but she couldn’t stop herself. “What do you do when he doesn’t have you running around?”

Given the freedom to speak, Mercurio spoke endlessly. He liked old cars and music from when he was human. He loved his few rare nights, wrapped up in pulp fiction novel. Sometimes, he went to the cafe down the road for a real coffee. He never could make it right at home.

Zari couldn’t help but compare. Ashley was her most recent experience, a man who seemed to spring into existence in the present — no past, no history, no future to speak of. The electric whirlwind alternatively terrified and excited her, though it had always thrilled her.

By comparison, Mercurio couldn’t hold an electric candle. He was boring. Desperately boring. But the look in his eye when he was with her, the way he touched her, smiled at her, reminded her of another.

Her husband. A man she had not dared to think of for thirty years. Michael Adeyemi, a carpenter she had met by chance at the post office. Six weeks dating and they had married, bought a house, had kids. He could be charming, too. Kind. Thoughtful. Human in all the ways vampires forgot.

“And poetry,” said Zari slyly when he seemed to wind down.

He cringed. “Not really. I was looking for more to write, saw that in a book and thought of you. I get it was probably too much — it  _ was _ too much. But. Plants?”

She smiled softly to herself. It could never be real. Never honest. Not properly. So long as she ferried information to Ashley, so long as she was there to spy on Mercurio’s master. Maybe it didn’t need to be. Maybe whatever it was could be was enough.

Zari didn’t want to settle, but it didn’t feel like settling.

“It was nice,” she said. Her hand slipped from the glass and his fingers slid into her palm. Her body did not respond as she might’ve hoped, but her heart and mind knew the familiar warmth, the touch of another.

He smiled. He had a nice smile. “Thanks. So, do you want something to eat?”

Zari chuckled. “We aren’t going to do that on a first date.”

He blushed. He had a nice blush, too. Mercurio rushed, standing, and moved behind the counter again. “No, no, no,” he said. “I got my dirty mitts on a sample of this exotic venom, which congeals blood into, well.”

He brought over a small plate and an ivory ramekin. With a tap, the bloody contents slid onto the plate, wobbly like a fancy gelatin dessert. He added a tiny sprig of mint as garnish. He looked so proud, Zari had to laugh. After a moment, Mercurio joined her.

“Are you getting Mexican from next door?” she asked, teasing. She gave the dessert an experimental poke. It jiggled. 

“Was thinking on it, but I didn’t want to disturb you with the smells,” he said. “My… relationships with vampires have never been personal. I know you don’t eat food-food, but does it smell gross?”

“Not really,” she said. “Sometimes I miss it.” Her spoon slid right through the blood pudding, thick and creamy. It tasted like blood, like one of Alice’s more obscure concoctions. It left a tingling, which Zari supposed was the venom. “It’s a relief to chew something again,” she said.

Mercurio relaxed. “Good. I didn’t know if this was gonna be weird or too much or—”

“It’s perfect,” she said, and was surprised to find she meant it.

He smiled so sweetly it made her embarrassed.

As Zari ate the bizarre but well-meaning dessert, Mercurio went off again. He hadn’t exactly gotten LaCroix’s permission to date his herald, so they would need to keep it a bit quiet.

“We could do this again,” she offered. “Besides, we live in the same building. It wouldn’t be anything to go across the hall.”

“I got all the new movies, even the ones still in theatre,” said Mercurio.

“How did you get them?” she asked. “ _ And _ this venom?”

Zari had hit upon a proud point and, briefly, she could see the Ventrue blood in him. “You could say it’s my life’s mission to get things. If I want to get something, not much can stand in my way.”

“Like me?” she said slyly.

“Exactly.” He smiled, before he eyes went wild and he backpedaled. “No, no. I’m not saying you’re a thing I want, or that I’d take you by force, but, the big guy, the blood, the age difference, I’m not letting any of that get in my way.”

“Age difference?” she asked. She set aside her spoon and leaned forward. “How old do you think I am?”

Mercurio stared. “Uh. God. I don’t know. You must’ve been a teenager when you were turned, right?”

Zari scoffed. She knew she didn’t look like any teenager, but that was a fair guess. “Are you saying I look like a child?” she teased.

“God no,” he said, beginning to understand. “You’re a full grown woman.”

Zari put her hand on his again. “It’s okay. I was born in the fifties.”

He raised an eyebrow and took her hand again. “Nineteen-fifties?”

She groaned and snatched her hand away. “Yes, of course. Are you saying I look old?”

“Never.”

The CD player came to the end of it and Mercurio went to start it again. He didn’t sit back down. Zari felt the hesitation in the air and continued eating, content. This was the game he played. She wouldn’t take the steps for him. Boring he might be, but he wouldn’t be a wimp. She wouldn’t stand for it.

Mercurio coughed. “Maybe after you finish, would you like to dance or something?”

Zari set aside the pudding and stood. With heels, she was a few inches taller than him. But he didn’t look offended, only excited and nervous. She smelled sweat again as he put his hands on her. Apparently, Ventrue blood did not miraculously give the ability to waltz. They swayed, turning in lopsided circles to Roy Orbison. Mercurio’s hands stayed respectful, modest, firm on her hips and not wandering. His eyes were the only soft thing in his face as the inches between them vanished in the song until their bodies pressed tight.

“Wait,” said Zari. She stepped out of her shoes and nudged them aside.

“You didn’t have to,” he protested.

“I wanted to.” Her hands slid up his chest to rest, linked, behind his neck. She smiled up at him. They were about the same height. Eye level. Lip level. “Isn’t this better?”

“Yeah,” admitted Mercurio softly. “But I didn’t want you to get cold or nothing. The grout between the tiles is really worn, so the edges are sharp and—”

“The grout between the tiles,” she repeated in disbelief. “You got a woman in your arms and this is how you want to seduce her?”

He blushed, embarrassed. This close, the rush of blood to the skin, the pheromones, the sweat and cologne, tempted her to bite. She didn’t, but she thought of it. 

A cell phone rang, muffled but shrill.

Mercurio stiffened like a bomb went off, but he realised it wasn’t his. Zari stalked back to her chair and recognised Therese’s number.

“It’s Voerman,” she muttered.

Zari was late for elysium. It had started twenty minutes ago.

“Better answer it,” said Mercurio, stepping back, as if it mattered. In the otherwise quiet cafe, he’d hear every word.

Zari flipped open her phone. “Madame Seneschal.”

“No,” cried Jeanette. “It’s me.” She sobbed shrilly. “Please, God please, you have to help me, swanling. Do — Just do little old me a tiny favour.” She tried to control the sniffle, but failed with her usual seduction.

“What’s going on?” asked Zari.

“Therese wants to play Mother as well as Queen Victoria. She doesn’t like my new friends. She doesn’t like the silver swan, or the badger, or the rat.”

In spite of herself, Zari felt her stomach fall out. “Is Ashley in danger?”

“The rat is,” howled Jeanette. “The sweet rat with his sweet rat face and curling wet tongue. She — She says she’s gonna kill him. I told him to gotta go into hiding, but Therese…” Jeanette shuddered and lowered her voice to a hiss. “She’s on the warpath. I’m her sister, but she’s letting nothing and no one stand in her way. Nothing and no one. She’ll — One night, she’ll calm down. But… I’m scared. I can’t leave. I—”

“Calm down,” said Zari, shushing wildly. “Come on, girl, pull yourself together. Go… live with the rat a few nights until Therese calms down.

“She burned my clothes!” cried Jeanette. “I had to run. I’m hiding down in Marina Del Rey, in a diner called Rex’s. Invisible. Hot bloods can’t see me.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll come get you. It’ll be okay, Jeanette.”

“I’m so scared,” she whimpered. “Zari, I’m so scared.”

The line went dead.

Mercurio rubbed his nose. “I know Rex’s. It’s just off main.”

“This isn’t your problem,” said Zari defensively. She picked up her bag and shoes.

He moved between her and the door. “I want to make it my problem.” He opened the door for her. “I can get your car tomorrow, daytime, just let me come.”

Zari relented with a short nod and stalked out, Mercurio close behind. He drove an anonymous black car that made Zari wonder if all Ventrue rented from the same dealership. Town Cars For World Domination. Mercurio left Santa Monica quickly and peeled into Marina Del Rey.

“Monroe had a ghoul,” said Zari at last. “Every time there was trouble, she got pumped full of bullets. Took days to heal.”

“I think I met her,” said Mercurio. “After she got promoted.”

“She didn’t get promoted,” she said darkly. “She ran out of luck.”

“I know what I’m doing,” he promised.

“So did she.”

It wasn’t until Mercurio looked for a parking spot off main street that Zari noticed where they were. It wasn’t a couple blocks away from Noel’s house. Maybe a half dozen from the house she had shared with her husband. Why did Jeanette come out here to hide? Did she know?

He parked and reached over Zari’s knees to pop open the glove compartment. She didn’t know much about guns, but it looked dangerous in his hands. 

“Jeanette’s just scared shitless,” said Zari. “She doesn’t need a gun. She needs a hug. And a therapist.”

“With all respect,” said Mercurio, “I’m a ghoul. I need something to even the odds.”

He adjusted the holster and stepped out into the street. With a sigh, Zari put her shoes back on and followed. The two of them were dramatically overdressed for the all-night diner. A gang of teenagers in ratty wife-beaters and jeans sized them up. The waitress behind the register blinked life back into herself and stretched.

“Can I help you guys?” she asked.

“Just waiting for someone,” said Mercurio. “She should’ve gotten here, first, though. Hard to forget. Medium height. Slender. Er, endowed, up here. Lots of mascara and pigtails.”

The waitress shrugged. “Didn’t see her.”

Zari had stepped away from Mercurio with a dark feeling in the pit of her stomach. As she scanned the diner with Auspex, the feeling strengthened. Mortal auras flashed, vibrant; Mercurio’s, a little dimmer. The air tasted worn, familiar, like the diner was a regular spot locals treated like their friend’s house. 

But no Jeanette. No sob-stricken fear in the air. She had never been here. 

She had called from Therese’s phone. 

“Mercurio,” said Zari urgently, but the gang at the far table had already stood up. “Can you work Dominate?”

Mercurio blinked, looking at the waitress, who showed no interest in the obvious Masquerade breech. “Uh, yeah. Some, I mean, enough.”

“Looking for Jeanette?” asked one of the gang. “Girl can’t come herself, but she gave us a message to pass on.”

And he went for something at the back of his waistband.

In a blur of Celerity, Zari wrenched the tiny handgun from her bag and shot. Before the bullet reached the first of them, she crossed the diner and used the momentum as force to punch one of them. The other two spun around, confused, as blood and bits of brain splattered over them. Mercurio took care of them before they knew what had happened.

“I could’ve done that,” he said, his pride at last wounded.

“Didn’t want it to get messy,” said Zari.

The waitress was paralyzed, scarcely breathing.

Mercurio raised a hand and put his gun away. “Miss, I want you to listen really close to me…”

Zari’s phone rang again. Therese’s number. Jeanette.

“What the hell is going on?” Zari demanded. “Is there another Rex’s diner I was supposed to head to?”

“I’m so terribly sorry about that,” said Therese crisply. But it could’ve been Jeanette, just colder and harder than Zari knew her. “My sister was just furious about your refusal to sabotage my gallery. Tempers run rampant, I’m sure you know. She sent those men to kill you.”

“But—”

“I am going to make sure nothing like this happens ever again,” finished Therese in a voice Zari didn’t like at all.

Behind Therese, screamed someone who sounded like Jeanette, “She’s crazy!  _ Help me _ !”

The receiver muffled before Therese came back. “Sorry about that.”

“She just sent humans,” said Zari in a small voice. “They weren’t any trouble. I’m fixing the Masquerade here. Whatever’s got between you two, I’m sure it can be fixed. It’s bloody and messy and violent and hateful, but look what we are.”

“Come by Asylum,” said Therese. “We can sort it out.”

Therese hung up and, after a moment, so did Zari.

The waitress’ eyes had gone glassy and she drooled slightly. Mercurio winced.

“I think I went a little hard, but we don’t want this coming down on us from above,” he said. He frowned. “What’s wrong? Was that Jeanette? What’s going on with those Voermans?”

Zari couldn’t take him. Whatever this was, it had to be handled delicately. And, if Therese knew she involved herself with LaCroix’s ghoul, it would get back to the prince before dawn. 

“Nothing,” breathed Zari. She cleared her throat. “Therese wants me to come to Asylum and discuss what we’re going to do about Jeanette.”

Mercurio nodded. “Alright. I get Jeanette’s her family, but court’s court, you know. How about this? I’ll drop you off at their club, go home, take a cab back to our cafe, get your car, leave it in Asylum for you, and cab home.”

Zari chuckled thickly. “You really think things through, don’t you?”

He smiled. “Got to. My life is a never-ending parade of logistics.” He held his hand out for her car keys, which she handed over. “I’ll leave them in the console. You deal with these nutcases.”

Zari had mastered ironing her face out smooth, but for some reason it hurt to lie to Mercurio. It was in how easy he just believed her, how he trusted she didn’t need or want him to deal with lick problems, how he would step back when she asked. He deserved better.

Asylum came far, far too soon. He lingered outside for a moment, long enough for her to jump out and hustle in. She took a deep breath and scrubbed the ghoul from her mind. 

The elevator took her up to the second floor, painted lavishly in red and tarnished gothic steel. Zari hated this role both the sisters had given her, like she was their mother trying to keep them both in time-out. They had decades on her and acted like brats.

Zari knocked briefly before entering their haven unannounced. Therese, in her standard black skirt-suit, pointed a gun at the bathroom door.

“Therese—” she called, but her voice died in her throat.

Therese turned. Her bun was smaller, as the other half of her blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail. That half of her face had been done up in thick eyeliner and mascara. Her jacket was open and, underneath, she wore no shirt, only Jeanette’s red lace push-up bra with the cleavage the twins shared.

“I’m truly sorry it has to end this way,” said Therese calmly, brandishing the gun. “You are very promising, Miss Herald, I do so admire you. You know your place. Unlike my befouled sister. And, now, she will never attempt to double-cross me again.”

“Don’t listen to her!” shrieked Jeanette out of the same mouth. “She’ll kill us both!”

“Shut up, Jeanette,” snapped Therese.

Zari looked again at the room. On one half of the divider, Therese’s room, an ornate walnut desk and computer, bookshelves, a bed made with military corners. On the other half of the room, Jeanette’s giant heart-shaped bed, stacks of magazines and porno DVDs, boy band posters.

Jeanette and Therese had called from the same phone number tonight.

“Fuck,” said Zari, dazed. She thought she was gonna faint.

“I’ve always looked out for you,” said Therese desperately. “Always loved you. But you had to go get jealous. You couldn’t stand my success, my happiness. You had to meddle. I didn’t want to end it like this. You  _ forced _ me.”

“Me?” Jeanette laughed. The sisters had always had the same shrill cold laugh. “You think  _ I’m _ jealous? It’s Daddy all over again—”

“Shut up.”

Jeanette tutted and tittered. “You just can’t stand to share. You can’t see me happy with anyone. And so, I walked in on them, the Ice Queen and Clown Prince of Los Angeles. You would  _ think _ a pair like that, they get off to reading last month’s figures—”

“Don’t finish that sentence, or you’re dead,” said Therese.

Jeanette giggled.

Zari could only stare. “You… walked in… on Therese?”

Jeanette nodded animatedly. “And what did your sweet Sebastian do?”

Therese’s breath rattled with a sob.

“That’s right. He held me, and loved me, and made me feel so good, and told me how much he loved me. Ah. What a gentleman.”

Jeanette sighed and hugged herself, until Therese wrenched the gun alongside their head. It wouldn’t kill, but brain damage could be next to impossible to heal, and who knew with Malkavians? It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen tonight.

“She says she’s pious as a nun, stable as the Earth’s orbit, but it’s all a lie — an act!” said Jeanette, struggling against the gun. “An act your precious saw straight through!”

Therese grunted and the two — one? — of them ended up on the floor. “Sebastian and I share something you — depraved flippant little slut — would never understand. It is not love or sex.  _ Understanding _ . The world owes us our due, but never gave. And so, we will take it.”

“Along with a hundred dozen orgasms,” added Jeanette, cackling.

“Shut up!”

“Hang on,” shouted Zari. “Stop it. Stop!”

The Voerman looked up at her, frightened.

“Girl — Girls, why don’t we talk, nicely. Just, quiet. Sit on the bed, no gun. Just talk.”

Therese snarled, but it vanished as Jeanette answered.

“Okay,” she said in a small voice. “I’m willing to talk, but — I don’t want to die.”

Cautiously, Zari reached and took the gun. It slipped from between the fingers and she threw it behind her. It clonked off the door.

“Jeanette… I would never kill you,” said Therese softly. “You’re my sister. You’ve done nothing but plot against me since the moment you were born. I’ve taken care of you for so long, it’s all I know. But  _ this _ is how you repay me?”

Jeanette hitched their skirt up and sat up, cross legged on the floor. “Taken care of me?” She sniffled and shook her head. “You’ve done nothing but keep me down, blame me for your shortcomings. Did you expect me to just let you run my life until Gehenna? No, sister, you’ve had this coming since our last sunrise.”

Zari sat on the floor with them, bending her knees with her dress. “Keep calm, Jeanette,” she said. “No threats.”

Jeanette gnawed on her lip and nodded.

“That’s just flat wrong,” said Therese desperately. “If it wasn’t for me, neither of us would’ve survived this long. They tried to seperate us, but I refused. I chose undeath and brought you along with me so that we could stay together — forever.”

Jeanette doodled swirls on the floorboards, her head on her hand. “Did you ask?” she asked.

Therese sighed. “There was no time, dear.”

Jeanette’s face twisted bitterly. “You’re a control freak.” She looked up to Zari. “If she can’t control something — people, things, emotions — she gets rid of it.”

“And you’re a wild animal,” snapped Therese. “You’ll rub up on anything that’ll take you for the night. And once you’re bred, blooded, and bored, you bite the hand that feeds you.”

“No insults, Therese,” said Zari, still struggling to follow along and process what exactly was happening. “Get to the root of why you don’t like… Jeanette exploring relationships and sexuality.”

Therese grimaced. “She… It reflects badly on us, all these dalliances with strange Anarchs and Nosferatu. It puts us in danger. Danger, I might add, that  _ I _ have to keep us safe from. She has all the fun and I have all the work.”

“Isn’t that how you like it?” asked Jeanette mischievously.

“No. It isn’t.”

“Oh.” Jeanette bit her full lip again. “Is that why, when lollipop LaCroix came offering the Ivory Tower, you two fucked on the filing cabinet that first night?”

Therese groaned and her head fell in her hands, only to whip up when Jeanette added, “I’m not insulting you.”

“I can’t believe you would watch,” said Therese venomously. “What a pervert.”

“I’m sorry about fucking your prince boy,” said Jeanette somberly. “He might’ve loved the love gun, but the bullets bang-banged right into your heart, and that wasn’t cool. Even if you are a cold-hearted, mean-spirited, control freak.”

“He was going to find out sooner or later,” said Therese with another pained groan. “Perhaps mid-encounter was not ideal.”

“Maybe the Clown Prince will be good for you,” said Jeanette weakly. “Eh?” She brushed a lock of hair from the other side of her face. “Can’t believe it’ll take a  _ Ventrue _ to get you to lighten up, but I’ll keep my distance.”

Therese half-smiled. “He’s important — not only to Westside, and all of Los Angeles, but to me. I want him to have a relationship with my sister.”

Jeanette grinned. “Can this relationship include strap-ons and ball gags?”

“No. Well, maybe sometimes, but I don’t want you to corrupt him.” Slowly, Therese stood up. “Apologies, Zari, I know this has been a stressful night.”

“I didn’t mean to send Badger’s boys,” said Jeanette with a face to wring tears from a stone. “I just got mad and I didn’t want to get mad at my sister. You understand.”

Zari nodded mutely. “Yeah. No problem.”

One of them pulled her into a hug and she lost track of the conversation between the sisters.

“You’re a really good friend, Zari… One of the best… Really, only true friend… Speak for yourself, I’ve got lots of friends, but they’re all scared of you… They would have nothing to fear if they were upstanding, honourable citizens of the Camarilla.”

Zari pulled away from the hug, her mind still paralyzed and struggling to comprehend. This was too much. She had met a few Malkavians. Some of them talked to themselves, others just had weird vibes. Was it common, among older Malks, to do… that?

The sisters continued to talk to each other as Zari left Asylum. She had almost forgotten. Across the street, her silver Mercedes waited at a parking meter. An extra two hours of coins had been fed in.

She braced her forehead against the wheel, groaning at the blessed silence. The prince… knew? He knew that his seneschal was two people in one body, who didn’t seem aware that they were in fact one physical person. Not only that but, mid-sex, Jeanette had taken Therese’s place, seduced him, and he had simply gone along with it. And Zari had thought Toreador family drama was complicated.

She reached into the console for her keys and smiled wetly. It wasn’t fancy linen, just a piece of paper ripped from a cheap pad, but a quick heart and a sad-looking daisy had been scrawled on it. She wedged it in the fans. And she knew where she had to go.

Zari drove back, her mind still lost somewhere in Asylum. She seemed to teleport back to the building. The door opened to her key. And she knocked on the door across the hall.

Mercurio answered the door in sweats. “You’re wet, is it raining?”

“Um. I guess so. Didn’t notice,” she said blandly.

His brow drew together. “Miss Herald—”

“Zari,” she insisted.

He swallowed and smiled, but his eyes were worried. “Zari, what happened?”

She shook her head, lost for words. “I’m not gonna talk about it. Problem’s settled. But… I want to forget. I need to forget. This night, it’s been a lot and — and I’m tired of being alone. I just want… I want boring.”

Mercurio’s smile grew. “I think I’m pretty exciting.”

Zari kissed him. She didn’t remember pushing into his apartment or letting him undress her, but she remembered his hands on her body, the way her name sounded in his lips, the dark hair on his chest, the way he felt inside her, her fangs inside him. She remembered the tidal wave of body heat that crashed down and made her forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've wanted to write this chapter for a while. Zari's starting to admit what she needs as a person. It's in the middle of a lot of darker stuff happening, even though Jeanette/Therese isn't exactly cheery, it goes better here than it does in canon. This is also literally the only way I can reconcile Jeanette pegging LaCroix.


	30. Lost Boy

The car was quiet. Too quiet. Charlie didn’t like it. She focused hard on the road, making sure they didn’t turn over, but her eyes kept flickering to Jesse. Charlie had gotten sick of Jesse playing silent treatment, so she had called her up and asked her to come down to the Harbour Barony with Jack. Like nothing had ever happened. Jesse had showed up, like nothing had ever happened. Even more monosyllabic than normal, sullen, brooding — but that was par for the course.

“Nice hair,” said Jesse out of the corner of her mouth. “How’d you do it?”

“Thanks.”

Jesse sighed. “Let’s cut the shit, alright? I was a pussy and I fucked up. Doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. We all got our buttons.”

Charlie risked a smile. “I like you, too.”

She snorted. “We aren’t in third grade.”

“I like-like you.”

Jesse sneered and actually turned to look at her. “Oh yeah? Did Johnny tell you at recess that I like-like you, too?” She reached an arm behind the back of Charlie’s chair and planted a kiss on her cheek. The hand wormed up her neck, strong and solid, and Charlie felt a flicker of fear.

She bit her lip and kissed back. “I gotta drive.” She forced a very unbelievable laugh.

“So, I don’t get your newsletter,” grumbled Jesse. “What’s down in — what’d you call it? — Harbour Barony?”

“Harbours, I’d guess.”

“Really funny, smartass.”

“The Lost Boys,” explained Charlie. “This far south, there’s Fortier in Anaheim, the end of Nines’ Downtown, and a bunch of loners. The Lost Boys are loners united. No baron, they all vote on their issues.”

“Doesn’t sound like very high priority to anyone,” said Jesse skeptically.

“That’s why we’re here and not Monroe, or Westside, or the Valley. It’s not like it’ll be any swing state, but when your mighty battles on ten-on-ten, maybe having ten more makes a difference.”

Charlie had come down to what licks called Harbour Town a lot. She knew it as Long Beach, Huntington, Torrance. Stretches of good surf and clear water. Ten minutes outside Long Beach, the properties even got more reasonable. She and Dustin used to talk about renting a place out here when they finished at UCLA.

As they pulled down the road along the ocean, rows upon rows upon rows of private marina moored private recreational boats, waxed and gleaming white in the dusky overhead lights. Palm trees marked the beachline. In the darkness, the white sand was all but black. Teenagers in hoodies clustered together with beers and loud music. The vampires were easy to see: another group, immune to the brisk chill, had staked their claim with boards. Jack had got there faster on wings.

Charlie parked and pulled the boards from the car quickly. Even if they were on business, wasn’t a great way to make friends with loner beach bum vampires by surfing with them?

“Be cool,” warned Charlie. “No Lovecraftian stuff.”

Jesse rolled her eyes and a shadow tentacle deftly took the boards from Charlie. The shadows smirked.

“Hey!” shouted Jack. He staggered up the beach, dripping wet, and wearing swim trunks. He shook his hair out and brushed it back. “Make it down okay?”

“Of course,” said Charlie. “Rode down the edge of Downtown all the way.”

“That’s what I meant,” said Jack darkly, giving a look to the Lost Boys. “Nines let you pass fine?”

Confused, Charlie nodded.

“I’m here, too,” said Jesse, waving her hand irritably.

Jack gave her an awkward glance. “Oh, yeah. Hi.”

More dudes came out of the water or pulled themselves up from the ground. The few who were clothed wore threadbare layers and rags saturated with sand. More than one had a permanent sunburn, a remnant the Embrace couldn’t heal. None looked aggressive, really. None jumped up and down for joy neither.

“Who’s the leader?” Charlie asked Jack in a whisper.

“Peter Pan,” said a Lost Boy on the ground. He jerked his head.

A handsome Black man with a broken nose and the lean balanced body of a surfer trudged up from the shallows. At the sound, Charlie felt Jesse’s sharp intake of breath. She offered a hand, but Jesse shrugged it off, scowling. Then she grabbed it anyway.

Jack put an arm around the Black man. “Charlie,  _ this _ is Stevie Boothe.”

Stevie stretched out a hand. “Thank fuck you didn’t call me Peter fucking Pan.”

Charlie shook it. “Charlie Bradley. I’m a Malk from up in Silver Lake. This is Jesse Harper, Lasombra.”

Stevie’s eyes swept over. “Looks like you’re back on two feet.”

“Different Lasombra,” growled Jesse.

“You heard about that?” asked Charlie.

“I hear a lot of things, Charlie Bradley.” He took a deep breath and smiled. “I know your baby sister was Garcia’s favourite snack. My boys heard the Red Question. One helped take down Jesus Rameriz. And now, a bunch of Ventrue are having a fang measuring contest and, somehow, Louis goddamned Fortier is the only one staying out of things.” He tongued a fang. “You know how to use that board? Your buddy here ain’t any water feral.”

Jack opened his mouth to argue, but then scratched the back of his head. “You know what, that’s fair.”

“I’ve been surfing all my life,” said Charlie with a crooked smile. “Doesn’t mean much, I guess, but I’m good.”

“I’m decent, too,” Jesse butt in.

“Let’s see how you roll, then,” said Stevie. He picked his board back up again and headed into the water.

Charlie remembered the talking-to Monroe had given her.  _ Whatever happens, go with it.  _ This wasn’t vital, but it could be important. More than that, it would show him she knew how to handle things. 

She pulled off her t-shirt and sneakers and took off after Stevie, Jack, and the others. The black water drank her up eagerly. It took all Charlie had to not go diving; it felt like flying. Had she been human, she never would’ve dared go out this far at night, but she wasn’t human. They were all sort of past drowning. The water was colder than her, but there was no bone chill in it. Pleasant, like a cold shower. 

Something moved beneath the water. Charlie did her best to ignore it. The stars danced, too, but that didn’t mean the sky was falling down — no matter how much she knew it would.

A wave started and she reoriented herself. It looked like a good one. Stevie and Jesse turned to catch it, too. Stevie stood too soon, showing off. Charlie groaned and popped up, too. It was too soon, the wave too small yet, like balancing on a marble. She wanted to call out for Jesse to ride it flat a while longer, but she wouldn’t appreciate that. Jesse stood up with the help of her tentacles of the deep, though even with that, she wobbled.

The wave crested and Stevie grinded against the foam, whooping. Further along, more Lost Boys followed. Charlie lowered herself and rode against it, eye on the shore. Look where you want to go. She had a hard time pulling her eyes off the water. It changed colouring, paling, reverbing with greys and whites, like something swam just under the surface. Fast.

The creature breeched. Jesse’s scream alerted Charlie that it wasn’t just her Cobweb. It was a colossal shark, jaws of multi-layered teeth snapping at clear air.

Jesse went flying into the water. The Lost Boys snorted and laughed.

“Jess!” she shouted. 

Sharks didn’t eat people. Sharks  _ also _ didn’t come this close to shore.

The shark had vanished again. Overhead, a couple of black birds circled. One was Jack. Gangrel. Water ferals.

It was a Gangrel, a vampire who could turn into a shark. Christ. That wasn’t in  _ The Vampire Dictionary _ , just carnivorous animals.

The wave carried them most of the way to shore before it fizzled out. Charlie sat on her board and looked behind them. Maybe a dozen creatures breeched — sharks, killer whales, orcas. All too big, too friendly. They didn’t act like animals acted.

A seal came at her like a bullet and stuck his handsome smooth head above water.

“Is it rude to pet Gangrel?” she asked him.

He snorted water out his nostrils and swam off, slapping his tail on the water to make his displeasure known. 

Charlie groaned and paddled her way over to where Jesse still treaded water. “They’re just Gangrel,” she called, trying to calm her. “They won’t eat you.”

Jesse was a weaker swimmer than she had first told Charlie. The first bit of panic and she lost her instincts. Her board drifted far off, lost to the water. Were she human, she would’ve drowned. Instead, when Charlie managed to cajole her trembling self to lie flat on the board as Charlie swam, Jesse just coughed out mouthfuls of ocean water.

Charlie dunked her head under and flattened her wet hair. “Doing okay?”

“Does it look like I’m doing okay?” she hissed. “Why the fuck did you drag me out here?”

“I thought it could be fun,” she said. “Besides, I invited you. Could’ve declined.”

“You  _ thought _ ,” said Jesse, snorting, but she only started coughing again.

“Paddle back to shore, babe,” said Charlie, forcing a smile.

“Don’t call me babe.”

“Then, paddle, friend,” she snapped. “Don’t lose that board to sea neither.”

Without another word, Charlie dropped herself under the surface and swam to shore. The water filled every crevice, blocking out whatever Jesse shouted after her. No breathing, no stiff muscles, just flying. With nightvision, it felt like another planet.

Charlie came back up again among the Lost Boys, who sat on their boards in the calmer waters. A couple nodded dude-like greetings.

“You’re good,” said Stevie with a shrug. “Better than I thought. I expected you’d be like  _ that _ .” He indicated with his chin where Jesse paddled awkwardly.

“She’s my girlfriend,” snapped Charlie.

Stevie snorted. “Poor you. Let’s get back to dry — get a drink, dry off. We can talk about whatever your captain wants.” He tossed back his head and called to one of the black birds above. “Luke, get the ferals.”

One split off to fetch the marine Gangrel, as the others made it back to dry land. Charlie took an offered towel and sat. Another bonus of short hair: it dried quicker. Someone turned on a radio of ska as the Gangrel found land legs again and joined them.

Jack dropped out of the sky on two legs, the driest one there. “Hey, do you guys trust Manuel Rubio — the Denny’s Setite?”

The Boys all looked to Stevie, who shrugged. “Depends. For what?”

“I got his beer.”

Stevie made a face. “Tell the snake thanks, no thanks. We prefer our drinks hot.”

Jack laughed and raised his hands. “If you wanna drink warm beer, that’s your choice man. No judgment.” He tapped Charlie as he passed. “I’ll get you one, girl.”

“Get one for Jess, too,” she said after him. She turned to Stevie. “So, you guys just drink blood all the time? Isn’t that boring as hell?”

Stevie smiled indulgently. A fang poked out. “Wow. You are new, aren’t you, babygirl?”

“Not new enough to be called ‘babygirl’ by a baron in Long Beach,” said Charlie frostily. She grinned. “I’m a toddler, at least.”

Jesse trudged out of the shallows, with a spotlight of darkness following her. It pulsed with humiliation. More than one Lost Boy clapped or whooped.

“Here’s your stupid board,” muttered Jesse, throwing it.

Charlie stood and stuck it in the sand.

Jesse wiped her mouth and squared up to Stevie. “You think it’s funny, having feral monsters in your water to kill people?”

Stevie looked to his boys, as though consulting. “Yeah. You know what, I think it’s fucking hilarious.”

A tendril snapped from the shadows and licked Stevie across the face. The Boys took a collective gasp. 

Stevie laughed and the cut healed. “You wanna go, that it?”

The shadows seared in their anger. Jesse shoved Stevie, hard, and it was on. He threw a punch. She took it in the face and kicked him in the balls, but he jumped backwards.

Jack dropped down next to Charlie with a six pack and handed her a beer. She nodded her thanks and opened it on a fang.

“So,” he asked, “what’s going on?”

She took a long drink. “Jesse’s pissed.”

“Ah. Greystone,” he said, referring to Salvador Garcia’s base, where licks fought and shot each other for fun. The violence bled over into every part of vampire existence. Made it ugly.

One of the marine Gangrels hovered over them. “Wanna go, old timer?” he asked.

“Don’t mess with me, milkfang,” said Jack, not even looking.

“I ain’t messing. It’s just good fun.”

“You need a broken jaw to have fun?” Jack groaned and stood, handing Charlie his beer to hold.

The other Gangrel bounced on the balls of his feet, his fists hovering near his face like a boxer. Jack moved faster than Charlie had ever seen him. One second, he was on two legs, smirking, the next a cougar snarled and launched the other Gangrel backwards in a tumble of claws and fur across the sand.

The rest of the Lost Boys paired off, though Charlie was pleased no one wanted to fight her. Maybe because she was a girl, maybe because she was Malkavian. She didn’t care.

Jesse came away from her brawl with Stevie bloody and limping. The shadows hadn’t moved an iota. Black and deep and angry.

“You gave it a shot,” said Charlie fairly. “Sit. Jack brought drinks. We can watch the Lost Boys not-kill each other.”

“ _ Get up _ ,” snarled Jesse.

In the chaos, the Dominate went unnoticed. Charlie stood, her legs numb and out of her control. She was not scared.

She nodded. “You’re right, babe. We should get home. It’s—”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not in the mood.”

“Don’t use Dominate on me,” Charlie snapped back.

“God, not everything is about you,” said Jesse, disgusted. “Perfect Charlie, you think you’re so better than the rest of us. Fight me.”

“I’m not gonna fight you,” she said wearily. 

“ _ Hit me _ .”

It was not only Charlie’s legs, but the rest of her that fell numb and out of her control. Her legs snapped into the stance Damsel had taught her, a lifetime ago. Her fingers clenched into a fist, pulled back, and fired. At the last second, she was able to divert it from Jesse’s face, but it still smashed into her collarbone.

The Dominate released her dazed and disoriented. Charlie stumbled back, but not far enough to avoid Jesse’s first attack. Charlie wasn’t a wimp. She could fight. Not a vampire who’d spent ten years killing vampires, but she put up a good effort. Everything hurt. Her knuckles, her ribs, her face. Her head hurt, her heart hurt, the Cobweb hurt. Her shadow hurt. 

Jesse’s leg swept under her and they hit the sand hard. Charlie grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Stop,” she begged. “It’s okay. We can talk this out. It’s okay, Jess. I love you.”

Jesse stopped and melted. The strength went from her. “I… I love you, too, Charlie.”

The words had just spilled from her without consulting her mind, but they were real. It was a mess, but it was one they were gonna come out of on the other side. It was  _ their _ mess. It had to be.

Jesse held her. It must’ve been only for a moment, but it felt like a lifetime. Charlie felt their lifetime. The water, the woods, the games, the blood living and loving. Loving enough to fight and make up. What a Grand old time. Grand last time.

When they stood and healed the broken and cracked bones, many of the fights were still going on. Stevie presided over them like a referee, snapping at those taking things too far. He jerked his chin at Charlie and Jesse, but when they came over, he said, “Not the shadow one. Just the moon.”

Reluctantly, Charlie followed him as they walked past the group and into a darker and lonliner patch of sand. “What’s up?”

“We’re gonna get the boys something to eat,” said Stevie, “but I wanted to know more about your captain.”

“Monroe.” She shrugged and tried to push Jesse from her mind. “He’s dope.”

“One night,” said Stevie seriously, “I know one of these jackoff capes is gonna take a look down south. I don’t know the Tower, but my sire did, and I’m not having my boys in that shithole.”

“You want things to stay the way they are,” said Charlie slowly. “That’s what Monroe wants. He wants all of us to get what we want, to live happy and free, but not so free we start killing each other.”

Stevie grunted and nodded, chewing on that. “I heard he whipped one of his  _ subjects _ .”

“Most of them did.” Charlie didn’t like thinking of that night. She gnawed on her lip and kicked at the sand. “She killed someone. Monroe wasn’t about to execute her and make more bodies, so he punished her. Anyone could have a turn at the whip, if they wanted. And then…” She struggled to finish. “He got on his knees and let them go at him.”

Stevie snorted. “Seriously? Did the Vent scream?”

“No,” said Charlie in a hard voice. “He didn’t. He just told them to go harder.”

He chuckled slyly. “Bastard got off on it. Sick.”

She got up in his face and forced him to stop. “He  _ didn’t _ . She broke the law, but the murder was his fault for not protecting us enough.”

He rolled his eyes. “Look. If those dumbfucks back there manage to kill each other, I’m not putting myself on the chopping block for them.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re down here,” said Charlie, glaring, “and Monroe’s up in Silver Lake, holding back the Tower.” She turned and continued on their way. “You wanted to get them food, didn’t you?”

Eventually, Stevie followed her. “There’s normally some beach bums hiding out before too late.”

They managed to find a bunch, where the sand broke at the boardwalk. The edge of downtown Long Beach had its share of homeless encampments, makeshift tarp shelters against the chill coming off the ocean.

“Is two enough?” asked Charlie, concerned.

“It’ll do.” Stevie shrugged. “Not like we need to be worried about someone expecting them home.”

The homeless clearly recognised Stevie. Maybe they just recognised the bizarre man, dripping wet in swimming trunk, late at night, as someone to stay away from. He looked over the people before settling on a younger man. Stevie grabbed and dragged him by the arm.

“Help,” he screamed. “Fuck. Anne,  _ do something _ .”

Charlie just stared.

Stevie readjusted and hitched the man over his shoulder like he weighed ten pounds. “Go on, you got arms, girl.”

Charlie could hear Monroe’s voice.  _ Whatever happens, go with it. _ It’s not like she hadn’t drank from humans — even killed. Was there really so much of a difference between William E Smith and a junkie pulled off the street?

One of the girls, it must’ve been Anne, covered her mouth, panting in fear and shaking. Charlie slowly advanced, like trying to capture a wild animal. “Come on. It’s okay. It’s—”

Another one of the homeless jerked up and stabbed her. Charlie felt the blade enter and exit her side, a dozen times, before being shoved in hard, one last time.

Stevie laughed, a booming ringing joyous sound. “You made a big mistake, dude.”

Charlie staggered backwards. There was pain. Lots of pain. It burned through her. But why? Why was there pain? Her organs weren’t doing anything. No bones were hurt. Nerves only kind of still worked. As she rationalized it, the pain went away. She pulled out the knife. The sickly feeling of invasion made her shiver. It was just a switchblade, cheap and jagged, glistening red with her blood.

She gazed up at the man who stabbed her, a big guy, a foot taller than her, with a gut and a scraggly grey beard.

“You were gonna kill me?” she asked. And, like that, her pity vanished. “I could’ve been any random co-ed. I got a girlfriend waiting for me. And… a Monroe.”

“You’re not human,” he said, his voice trembling.

“What? Because I’m on a liquids-only diet, that mean you get to shank me?” She took a step closer and grinned as he smacked against the lamppost.

“Stop playing with your food,” complained Stevie. “We got a lotta hungry boys to feed.”

Charlie considered the switchblade, but she didn’t want to waste the blood. “ _ Come with me _ ,” she said pleasantly.

It was easier than she thought. She said it. And he just did what she told him. Like magic. Staggering and crying, he followed them back across the beach until they came across the Lost Boys. The fights had worn out and Jack managed to pass around the beers. A couple dozen empty bottles — and the way the Lost Boys chugged and tossed their current drinks — said they didn’t want to in front of Stevie.

“Should’ve sent cat-man,” said Stevie, grunting as he dropped the man from his shoulders. “Get that puma to drag them away.”

“Cougar, dumbass,” said Jack proudly. He gestured to the vast amount of beer bottles. “Also,  _ I _ was the one who drank all these. And we’re gonna clean up before we leave.”

“Uh-huh,” said Stevie, smirking. “I’m a dumbass. I’m not blind.”

Charlie gave the big guy a push and he collapsed. “So, how’re we gonna do this—”

But the Lost Boys were a doing sort, not so much into the explaining. Like a flock of vultures on a carcass, they fell on the humans. Clothes tore as they searched for flesh. Neither of the men had a moment to scream.

Charlie jumped back, almost straight into Jesse. She was not afraid.

Jesse gave a small awkward smile and handed Charlie’s half-finished drink. “I kept this safe for you.”

Charlie stepped into her arms. It felt stiff and unnatural, like something else was there between them. “Thanks, b—” She bit her lip and stopped herself.

“It’s okay,” said Jesse, kissing her head. Her arm wound around Charlie’s bare waist. “Hey. What’s this? What — Oh, God.”

That was when Charlie remembered she was stabbed. “Right. Should probably heal that.” She wasn’t starving, but she was hungrier than she’d like. Always hungry. The world felt fuzzy with the Cobweb. “Maybe I’ll wait until we get back to Blue.”

Jesse picked at it and Charlie slapped her hand away. The concern faded to annoyance and Jesse pushed her way into the clustered flock that fed on the bigger man Charlie had brought in.

Charlie crossed her arms and tried to rub the feeling away. 

D&D tonight was going to be rough.

And it was.

Rhys managed to keep his mouth shut, but his wide rolling eyes said it all. No one argued, but no one needed to. Orion scooched further to Midnight, to make room for Jesse’s chair. Copper said hi, at least. Charlie couldn’t help but feel they took their cues from her. Maybe it was because Charlie didn’t look at Jesse too much. They didn’t hold hands. They didn’t touch each other. No lingering eye contact and dashing smiles. 

All Charlie could think of was the fight, the hammer of Dominate stealing her body, and what might’ve happened if she hadn’t told Jesse she loved her. Charlie wasn’t equipped for these conversations. She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t. Ashley was  _ not _ right. As fucked up and broken as both of them were, there was bound to be ugliness.

And she had brought it to D&D. Roleplaying was stilted and awkward, combat lifeless, and Rhys’ irritation bled into his DMing. Like a virus, it infected everyone. Even Alice kept her distance tonight.

Charlie got up long before Rhys called time. “Monroe’s got a job for me. I gotta get shit done.”

Rhys accepted her half-baked excuse and Charlie left in a hurry. Jesse could figure out her own way. Maybe she could put off that childish bad-boy persona and actually try to be a nice person for once.

The elevator took her back to the top and she realised he really was the person she needed to see. Monroe had been a lot less distant lately, though he made it clear his favourite place was his office — alone.

He turned his glance from a bare spot of thinking wall. “D&D over already?”

“No,” she said dully. And she dropped into the chair opposite his desk. Oreo burst from her bedroom and rubbed against her legs.

“How did the Harbour Barony go?”

“Fine.”

“I see,” he said knowingly. “What do you need?”

Charlie groaned and rubbed at her eyes. “So much. I don’t know.”

Monroe stood and put his jacket back on. “No. You misunderstand me. When Lloyd is upset, he needs his guitar. Red wants to see a show, typically ballet. Hawthorne wants to hit something. What do  _ you  _ need?”

“I’m not upset,” she protested. She didn’t like looking at him either, she found. Oreo was okay, though. She gave the kitten an arm and he crawled up to her shoulder. He knew better than to scream and pester her. He was a ghoul. “Griffith Park,” she muttered.

“Nature,” he said. “Alright. Get up.”

“No.”

“It’ll make you feel better. Stand.”

“Are you gonna Dominate me?” she asked, looking up at him.

Monroe blinked in surprise. Charlie realised she didn’t want his answer. It wouldn’t make her feel any better.

“Nevermind,” she grunted.

And Charlie, when she wanted to be, could be obedient. So, she got up, and she followed Monroe. She smiled to herself when he turned invisible to cross Blue Moon’s main floor. He wasn’t very good at it. But she was.

“Showoff,” he said with a smile in his voice.

There was something about being in a car that calmed her. The pass of the lights across the dark interior, the vibration of the engine, the shared silence. The fuzz of the Cobweb pulsed with a heartbeat, a tiny pitter patter that matched the purr of the engine. A visual and audial static. In tandem, it was soothing. She almost told him to just keep driving, but that sounded too Malkavian. She let him park. When an after hours ranger came around, Monroe sent him off with a nasty look.

“Lead the way,” he said to her. No Dominate, again.

She didn’t want to. She wanted to go back home, curl up alone in the dark, and wait for an eternity to pass by. At least a century or two. Vampires could do that, she knew. Enter torpor and wait for a new age.

Monroe put a gentle hand on her back and she started walking. She still wore the swim trunks, though they were now dry. Brambles scratched her calves, drawing pale lines. The hills smelled familiar and she filled her lungs with the wet lushness of winter. Gravel turned slick and hard through the thin soles of her shoes. Dusty paths became half-mud. The trees, drought-resistant natives, soaked up the rain and sunshine while they could. Oreo jumped from her shoulder and darted through the undergrowth. She placed a hand on the tree nearest. It still knew sunlight, as it had for decades. She wondered what ancient vampires thought about forests as old, if not older than them.

Charlie hadn’t realised where she had come until she looked around. Monroe stood in it. Her campsite.

“Rhys killed me here,” she said tonelessly.

“I’m sorry.”

“Mom and I used to come here a lot.” Now that she said it, she could see it. The tent, the little camper stove. A cold breeze came with her laugh. “She never liked spending money on junk food, but she always bought the expensive chips when we went camping. Sour cream and onion. And Madlibs. Stupid.”

Monroe crunched across the gravel and put a hand on her shoulder. “I know.”

“What do you know?” she snapped.

His hand slipped off her. “I know what it is like to lose a mother and have out of proportion emotional reactions to mundane things. Even though money was tight, she always bought peppermints at Christmas. Towards the end, I know her by white liquor.”

Charlie could see it. She didn’t know if it was real, the vision of the alcoholic woman, or just a conjuration of her imagination. “Mom liked red wine. It always put her to sleep. One glass.” She bit her lip until she tasted blood. The smell soiled the natural landscape and she licked it over. She shuddered as she tried to draw breath again. “I can’t lose anyone else. Not to anything.”

“You won’t.” He said it like a prayer to a god he knew wouldn’t answer. “You won’t lose me. No matter what.”

Charlie wasn’t listening, though. “Were you ever with someone you didn’t think you loved, or should love, but you loved the life you could have with them?”

The branches creaked with the wind, rubbing up on each other in a song like cricket’s legs. She heard his answer before he finally gave it.

“My sire,” he said. “Childe of the Ventrue Primogen, there aren’t many better lives. Things come easy. It’s easy to be happy, though never with him.”

She felt a tear trail down her face. “I want my life back,” she said hollowly. “I’m just so tired of being sad and pretending I’m not sad.”

“You will have it back and more,” he promised. The pain in his voice almost jumped her back to the world. “You will be happy, genuinely. You will smile. You will laugh. You will fall in love. You will find who you are and fall in love with your life. All scars will fade. We have nothing but time, my dear.”

“When?” she asked, lost to the idea.

“Every night, that time comes closer,” he said softly. “And, despite the overwhelming odds, tomorrow will come. The sun will set, childe.”

Her eyes slipped from the tree to the gnarled branches. Most of the leaves had fallen. Those who hadn’t had a message, but it wasn’t for her. It was for Monroe. “He knows, and he’s planning.”

“What?” asked Monroe in a very different voice. “How — Who?”

She shrugged and turned back to the trail. “I don’t know. The trees do, though. They know a lot.”

“What do they know?” he asked in a voice that made it very clear that this was a Malkavian thing and she should’ve shut her mouth. “Who is it?”

“Someone hates you and is planning… something.” Charlie cringed from the look in his eyes, from the way the branches turned in the breeze that spelled it out, clear as reading a book. “He knows.”

“Is it Ashley?” asked Monroe calmly.

Charlie scoffed. “No. Ashley just did my hair. That’s it.”


	31. Dead Frogs

“Why do I need a dead frog?”

“Because you do.”

“Are you saying Nosferatu ghosts respond to dead frogs?”

“No.”

“Are Sabbat scared of dead frogs?”

The corner of Orsay’s mouth twitched. It was the closest Jack had gotten to make her smile. “No.”

“Then what purpose do frogs serve in this rat’s nest of a ritual?” asked Jack. He stood up and dusted his hands off on his jeans. “If we’re using the skull of the father as the circle’s focal, won’t another spirit just confuse the energies?” 

Her mouth widened into an expression that could  _ almost _ be a smile. New record. 

They huddled in the middle of Downtown, just above the sewer entrance Deb had led Jack to, where poor Gregory had died to the supposed Tzimisce ghoul. Jack, at least, fit in. Orsay couldn’t look more like a vampire if she tried.

“Yes,” she said impatiently. “Another spirit can confuse energies, but our sorcery is driven by blood and will. If your will is not strong enough to subsume a dead frog, I don’t know why I’m here.”

The way she said it made it seem like a threat, but Jack had been dealing with her threats all night. Really, they were compliments. She sniffed and stuck her nose in the air when he grinned like that, but it didn’t stop them.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go frog hunting.”

He left, returning as a cougar minutes later with a dead frog dangling from his mouth. Gently, he lowered the bloody amphibian onto the circle’s four o’clock. Orsay reached a hand and Jack cringed, ready to be petted or scratched behind the ears, but she only patted his shoulder. Same as if he were on two legs. He blinked and returned to his standard form.

“What’s next?” he asked.

There was always a next. More ingredients to be activated and tuned to different cosmic energies. More insults. More compliments. Too fast, Jack learned their dance. For some reason, Orsay was a lot less terrifying in the real world, outside her macabre den of bone wind chimes. She knew her shit. 

When Jack had met up with her, almost casually, she had been reworking the alerts Ryuko and Jack had set up weeks ago. The magic became physical, lines of light woven that she detangled and knotted anew, in more intricate and balanced shapes. Then, she blew the candles out and they vanished, the nets sealing.

“I got thick fingers,” Jack had said as a greeting. “Glad you finished that before I got here.”

“Oh, but I didn’t,” she said with that not smile. “There’s another alert net, just on the other side of the street, that should be remedied. And you’re not untying string. You’re correcting lines of Auspex-fueled pathos of spirits. Finger thickness is not taken into account. Come here.”

Jack came, fully trusting, and wish he had been more cautious. Orsay had produced a knife in a flash and sliced through his wrist. The fresh blood poured in shock and it felt like something stapled into his brain. Jack collapsed with a cry.

“Captain Monroe trusts you, intimately, with his domain,” she said calmly. “Having defences alerted to one such as myself is only suspect. Now, stop being so dramatic and foolish. Get up. We have work to do.”

All night. All night work. Jack even got used to the alerts being jammed into the back of his brain. If only they didn’t have to test it by walking over the lines. It was like a little pop-up, a flash of vision of a red-clothed woman and the name  _ Orsay Grimaldi, Cainite. _ It kinda hurt.

But Monroe would be happy. It would keep them safe. Jack realised, as they went to the different highways in and out of Switzerland, they were knitting the barony closed. He had everyone’s travel info, whenever they crossed. Cool. By the end, he didn’t even think to complain about his thick fingers.

“How many more are left?” Jack whined as he consulted their summoning circle again. “Dawn’s gonna come before we’re ready.”

“All that is left is the activation.” Orsay took a bouquet of mixed herbs from a leather satchel and lit them. The thick smoke burned Jack’s throat — let alone what the fire did to the Beast. Instinct took over and he leapt into the sky as a bat, hiding on a street lamp overhead.

“Really?” she burst out, staring up.

Jack squeaked, though could’ve have come up with words if he wanted to.

Orsay laughed — a true honest laugh — and muttered to herself in an eastern European language. Maybe Russian. Maybe he should learn Russian. Jack was good with languages. She began to chant, but not in any language Jack ever knew, wafting the herbs. As they continued to burn, he realised they were poisonous. When the smoke thinned, she dropped the bundle at the center and they spontaneously lit with blue. The smoke belched, thick and heavy and white.

Hesitatingly, Jack fluttered down. He could feel it. Both he and Orsay had put their blood into the ritual. Completed, it spoke to both of them, pulled together across the aether. She had backed off, though. The swirling energies of the ritual relied on him to direct it. He focused on Gregor, the imprint his spirit had left with his death down below. It took a minute.

The white smoke replayed Gregor the Nosferatu’s final moments: being torn to shreds by a creature twice his size. It looked like someone had taken two clay people and smashed them together. The features distorted, the second face was plastered into an arm. Bony protrusions ran down the arms and back, but the torso was thickly padded like rough leather. Once, they  _ had _ been two people. Before the Tzimisce got them.

Szlachta. Ghouls formed like Frankenstein monsters with spare parts, victim to the imaginations of the fiends and the power of their signature Discipline, flesh-crafting Vicissitude.

Deb was right. The Sabbat had moved into the sewers.

“Thank Caine the alerts will work on ghouls,” she said with a sigh. She swept an arm through the vision. “We have a lot more work to do,” she continued, determined. “Unless someone has the influence in city government to fill sewer entrances, we must alert each manhole and cover in the domain.”

Jack found two legs again and winced. “That’s… gonna be a lot. I think I should take it to Monroe, see what he wants to do with this.”

“You’re just trying to get out of work, she sniffed.

“No,” he said, annoyed. “I’m not scared of work. But my head can only hold so many before it explodes. And that’s… practical and probably the safest, but that could be  _ weeks _ of work, combing through for each grate and manhole.”

“It doesn’t need to be an alert,” she snapped. “It can be a ward, preventing ghouls from crossing up from the sewer. Whatever else szlachta are, they require vitae for their bodies to support the transformations.”

A terrible thought came to Jack and it must’ve been all over his face.

Orsay pursed her lips. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I have made szlachta. No, I will not again.”

She bent and began to collect the spent remains of the circle, tucking away the chalice and what could be salvaged. 

“Can you give me spines?” asked Jack in a hushed voice.

“I can give you a hole in your head.”

“Great, that’s just what my head needs.”

She almost smiled. “Go, then. Seek advice from Captain Monroe. Find me. I will be waiting.”

Before tonight, Jack would’ve gladly taken the opening to fly the fuck away from the freaky witch. Instead, he hesitated. “You’re down in Silver Lake now, right?”

Orsay glanced up. “Yes.” She told him the address. She turned back to continue collecting the candles on the rim of the circle, but she didn’t move. “If you fear my pack, the Hollowmen, there is no need. They have not visited me since their arrival. And, if you find yourself in need of my services again, my door is open.”

“What about for Russian tea?” asked Jack. “I’m sure I could talk Rubio into trying to brew blood-tea.”

“I am Polish,” she said sternly, still not looking at him.

He shrugged. “Fine. Polish tea. I could care less. You — Well. You didn’t underestimate me. I—”

Orsay swept to her full height and advanced on Jack. He wasn’t proud of the way he stumbled backwards.

“Listen well, Mr Shen,” she said. “If our relationship is to progress any length beyond professional work for Captain Monroe, it will not include stuttering emotional devotions or awkward conversations of matters of the heart. Do I make myself clear?”

Jack nodded mutely, wide-eyed.

Her peculiar red eyes looked him up and down. “You have nothing to fear from me. Also, it is ‘couldn’t care less’. Not ‘could care less’.”

She sounded like she would’ve said more but, given her earlier qualifier, Jack didn’t expect anything else. He opened his mouth.

“Go, childe of Ennoia,” she said with a smile in her voice.

If the woman ordered him, there was nothing else to say to it. Jack took off on black wings. There was no need to bother Monroe now. Besides, it was Friday. Jack had a commitment, at least to himself. And he didn’t like to break commitments. Even if no one else knew or cared.

Jack found his perch. It was a home in Echo Park, on the weird edge place between Monroe and Downtown. A nice family home, two stories, with a nice porch, a sizable backyard with a doghouse, and even an aged branchy tree in the backyard. The dog, scared shitless by the vampire smell, cowered in his house. The windows on the top floor were still light. And the drapes hadn’t shut. 

In one room, newly painted pink, a little girl watched television. The screen glowed against the ceiling. Parents shuffled around. And began the fight for bed. The TV turned off, the girl complained, and a story was read. Something about bears. The lights turned off, the drapes and window shut, and her room went dark.

Dustin opened the patio door in the kitchen. He stepped out in flannel bottoms and a ratty t-shirt. “Oscar,” he called, whistling. “Come here, boy.”

The dog in his doghouse yowled pitifully. Dustin groaned and headed inside, returning with a pair of slippers to cross the grass.

“Why do you do this, buddy? Hey?” Dustin reached into the doghouse and pulled the border collie back out. It struggled mightily, but Dustin just picked him up, cursing all the while. 

They were safe. They were alright.

Satisfied, Jack looked to the higher branches. Maybe the roof. Maybe he couldn't provide surveillance every night, but two nights a week was better than no nights a week. Maybe it was creepy and voyeuristic, but it made him feel better. Felt like he was doing something, worth something.

Dustin came out again and stalked right up to the tree. He threw a cautionary look back to the house before hissing, “I know what you’re doing. What do you think Bella’s gonna say, when she sees you around here? I’m not saying fuck off, but you don’t think she’s gonna notice when the same giant black bird hangs around? Or a damn  _ bat _ ?”

Jack cocked his head and cawed. Dustin jerked backwards at the sound. 

“Am I just talking to a bird?” he asked. He passed a hand down his face. “Man. I really lost it.” He squinted. “No. No. No bird is  _ this _ big. Get down here.”

Tired, Jack dropped from the tree and landed on two legs. “Actually, a lot of birds are. I take the form of a raven, which are huge animals, and the Blood only makes them bigger.” He raised his hands. “Now, I know I might have been a bat once. I think I remember that. Not my smartest move, but, sometimes, you just don’t want to be a bird. Perching too long as a raven makes me stiff.”

Dustin stared. “Oh, shit.”

Jack scratched the back of his head, wincing as he understood. “You thought I was Charlie.”

“Do I just got scent that  _ vampires _ like?” he asked, barely mouthing the word. He looked back to the house again. 

Jack shrugged. “Nothing special, no offence.”

“You know Charlie?” asked Dustin in a whisper. “Is she okay? Did she send you to keep an eye on me? What’s going on with the… creature of the night community?”

“Charlie’s good. Better than I’ve ever seen her. She doesn’t know I’m here. I been hanging around Sage since before you were born.” Jack could look anywhere but at Dustin. It wasn’t breaking the Masquerade, not really. Charlie had already done that. Smart thing would be to leave, but every lick had a couple of humans who knew. “The — uh — creature of the night community is fighting a cold war over Los Angeles. It’s not a good chance, but there is a chance that someone could try to hurt you, to get to Charlie. Monroe’s one of the big players right now and — Do you know Monroe? Did Charlie talk much about us?”

“Not enough, but she told me bits,” said Dustin. A touch of frantic energy hit his eyes and voice. “What do you mean ‘cold war’? What’s gonna happen to my family?”

“It’s why I’m here,” said Jack. “You’re pretty safe. I think most of the Anarchs are moving past the whole Red Question, Garcia eating babies stuff. But, Charlie’s one of Monroe’s and taking Bella worked once to hurt his base. Licks, we’re not a real creative people.” He put out a hand. “By the way, I am impressed. Accepting your new friend as a dark bloodsucking creature of the night really speaks to your maturity.”

“Thanks,” said Dustin dimly. “I’ve had practice. What can I do to protect us? Should I be stocking up on stakes or silver bullets?”

“It’s damn hard to stake a vampire, harder for a human,” said Jack, suddenly at a loss. “I’ll think of something, man. Maybe I can get this witch to make you a talisman. Talismans can get pretty powerful.”

“So. Magic.” Dustin nodded, eyes wide. “Cool. Cool. We’re just gonna brush right past that.”

Jack shrugged. “You know. Blood magic.”

“Blood magic,” he said suspiciously. “Maybe not, then. I—”

“Oh, I’m sorry, man. Is this a Jewish thing? Do Jewish people not like magic?”

“I mean, theoretically, it’s — uh — it’s debated,” he said, slightly hysterically. “We debate everything. It’s all up for debate. I’m more in the ‘magic’s not real but is an expression of religious belief and is therefore valuable’ camp but I don’t think this qualifies.”

Jack scrunched up his face. “Maybe we can talk to a rabbi and—”

Dustin burst out laughing, shriller than normal. It was Jack’s turn to look anxiously at the house.

“You — You want me to ask Rabbi Braun if blood magic talismans are halachic?”

“If it makes you feel better,” he said in a small voice. “What if the blood is only vampire?  _ And  _ it’s consensually donated?”

Dustin snorted. “Whatever, man.”

Jack cringed as he looked up at Dustin. “So, are we cool? Should I just skip out on Sage and the girls?”

“The girls,” he repeated, frowning. “Melissa’s the youngest and, what’s she, thirty-five? Fourty?”

“I’m seventy-five, give or take.”

Dustin’s eyebrows shot up and he got that dazed, slightly hysterical look back. “Wow.”

“If you’re done with vampires, I get it,” said Jack, understanding. “No hard feelings.”

“You’re older than my grandfather.”

Jack chuckled. Once he broke the stormy silence, Dustin started laughing, too, a much more normal and stable laugh.

“Are you gonna turn me into a vampire?” asked Dustin.

Jack stopped laughing. “Nah, man. I don’t do that. I can’t take that on. I’m not talking about damning a soul, but, just, taking you out of your life.”

He smirked sadly. “My life isn’t anything much.”

“Would you believe me if I told you I’d trade almost anything to swap lives with you right now?” said Jack dryly.

Dustin looked like he was gonna answer on impulse, a hard laughing  _ no _ . Then, he took a second look and swallowed. “We all got our shit, I guess.”

“Some shit stinks worse than other shit.”

He took a deep breath. “Do you need to be invited in?”

“When I’m feeling like a nice guy, I generally wait to be invited.” Jack didn’t like where this was going. He looked back up to the house. The far left window, which he knew was the parents’ bedroom, had turned out their lights. “But I don’t think it’s a great idea.”

“What, you’ll lurk outside a bedroom window as a honking black raven but you won’t come in for a drink?” Dustin smiled thinly, but Jack could see the fear. It was only a joke, not an invitation to feed. Testing the waters.

“When did you figure out?” he asked.

“You said before you needed to be home before sun-up,” said Dustin, snorting. “No one talks like that. It was just a stupid thought, then, but it feels a lot less stupid now.”

Maybe he hadn’t been the most discreet. He wondered if the Sage girls had suspicions, but figured that Dustin had just been on red alert ever since his best friend turned.

“I’m sorry about Charlie,” said Jack suddenly. “Among ourselves, everyone pities a new fledgling, because we all lost what they’re losing, but no one really thinks about the people left behind.”

“Yeah. It blows.” Dustin struggled to keep his breathing level, but his heart ticked up. “I did so much for her,” he whispered angrily. “Even before. I never asked for anything, I never  _ wanted _ anything. I just… wanted to do something good for my friend. Then, she was different. I couldn’t understand it. She shut me out, but every time she went out I was terrified. Honestly, I’m relieved she left.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the tree, lost in thought. “Does that make a terrible person?”

“No. We can only take so much. Sometimes people change, because they want to or they have to, and they didn’t ask permission,” he said quietly. “No one in your life is forever, no one but you.”

Dustin looked at him, surprised.

“Did I help?” asked Jack.

Dustin only chuckled wryly. “Yeah, man, I think you did. Thanks. Will I see you at Sage next Wednesday?”

Jack grinned. “Probably. I might have work to do, but I’ll stop by.”

Jack’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out with a wince, hoping against hope it was Orsay or Ryuko. It wasn’t. It wasn’t even Monroe. It was Damsel. Her text didn’t have anything good to say. She probably wasn’t supposed to send it.

“So, about that vampire cold war…” said Dustin, reading the look on his face.

“You’ll just hear it as weird shit on the news,” said Jack dully. “But I gotta get got. You might wanna step back.”

He took a few steps back and Jack found his wings again, as easy as cracking his knuckles. Dustin stared, horrified, and laughed. “That is the coolest and most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” he said gleefully.

Jack croaked and slapped Dustin’s leg with a wing before taking off. Little scoundrel. Jack was happy he found him. Now that things were more honest, maybe he could answer some of the questions Charlie had left him with. It was best for fledglings to not try to keep contact with their humans, but there was no reason to leave them dangle. Maybe Jack could even meet Bella. Maybe a high-five.

The skyscrapers of Downtown embraced the raven like a forest. He found the Last Round quick enough. Most nights, it was just suspicious, probably gang-related or criminal. Tonight, it could’ve cracked the Masq. Jack waited on the rooftop, small and unobtrusive. Licks poured out of it like a street fair. Everyone. Everyone Jack had ever known. Black Beards from Compton. Cobras from Downey. Black Lotus from Little Tokyo. More solo fliers. Many of them had luggage or backpacks. Most had guns or machetes. And everywhere — on street lamps, shadowy in the alleys, and perched worryingly on shoulders — were Gangrel. Bats, black birds, wolves. A moose.

Jack had hoped to burst into the Last Round or meet Damsel in an alley. He needed to confront her.

Slowly, Jack found invisibility. But it was too hard to keep animal shape, too. He slid off the roof and landed deftly. Back door. This used to be his crib. He knew all the ins and outs. The door opened soundlessly and dropped him by the bathrooms. He had never heard such a din in the Last Round. But it wasn’t celebratory. It was panicked, fearful.

What the fuck was Nines thinking?

Damsel’s strained voice cracked as she tried to shout over everyone. People kept interrupting her. Jack kept himself in the narrow back hall, but peered out. She stood on a table, red in the face as her hair. The Brujah Anarchs smelled frenzy. They were trying to push her into it. Everyone was packed tight, like sardines. Jack didn’t even know Downtown had this many.

“We’re just waiting for Yvonne and her boys to come down,” shouted Damsel. “Don’t get your fangs in a twist if you want to keep them.”

Jack pulled out his phone and gave her a return text.  _ I’m here. Backdoor. _

As he expected, she took the out and gave a sigh of relief that was more a snarl. When she hopped down from the table, she yelled, “Move!” and the crowd parted to let her pass. They shouted obscenities after her as she stalked out the door. Jack followed.

The alley was blissfully quiet. Damsel thought she was alone and ripped off her beret. She shook her head and whimpered, “Fuck.”

Jack shouldered off the invisibility. It left him a wicked headache.

Damsel hurriedly put her hat back on and sniffed to face him with a stiff upper lip.

Jack lost all his words. He couldn’t yell at her, curse her out for Nines’ plans. It wasn’t her fault. She just did what she was told, because she needed to.

“Nines is baron now, huh?” he said. “He always said barons were no better than princes, that consolidating power in a figurehead—”

“Yeah, well,” snapped Damsel. “Things change.”

“Things do change,” he agreed. “What’s with the block party out front? Or is Nines going full Sabbat and calling it a war party?”

She didn’t rise to the bait. Damsel moved to lean against the backdoor, in case someone came out. “I wanted you to hear it from me,” she said heavily. “The Bone Flowers are missing. We sent Patch down to Chinatown to check on them. That was three nights ago. There’s… a new force down there, who aren’t taking nice to Nines. She sent a guy with an offer of peace, for the Middle Kingdom.” She snorted.

“She? What she?” asked Jack urgently. “Who is this?”

“Ming Xiao,” said Damsel, shaking her head. “You know her? No one knows if she’s Tower or Movement. Nines figures Sabbat, but—”

Jack leaned against the door next to Damsel. It was the closest she had let him get in years. “What do you think she is?”

“Sabbat don’t send envoys, unless hand grenades count.” She took her hat off again and worried the brim. “I don’t know what she is. Her guy said they weren’t licks, but, they were pale, mean, had fangs — what else can we call them?”

“You have shit all,” whispered Jack as he realised. “Best case, it’s a new gang who wants a piece of Nines’ huge pie — all the power to them. Killing them is all in good old Anarch spirit, nevermind that Nines called in an army to crush a rebellion. Worst case, you’re about to poke a hornets’ nest and you don’t know if there’s hornets or fairies or werewolves in it.”

She nodded, breath whistling through her fangs. “What should I do?” she whispered, as though she could barely stand to ask for help.

This wasn’t the time for  _ I told you so _ ’s. Jack stomached thirty years of rivalry. “Do you want what I think you should do or do you wanna hear something you’ll like?”

“Just the second,” she said with a small smile. “I could do with advice I like.”

He sighed. “Sometimes, when we follow people, we can’t do it blindly. They need other insights, other points of view to make decisions. Even Nines isn’t always right. Send back a message, get them to a talking table, learn about who and what they are, what they want, and  _ then _ , see if you need to take them out.”

Damsel stopped fiddling with her hat so much. “I’m down with that,” she said slowly. “Brujah, the passion is a good driver, but, sometimes, it hits too hard, you know? Gets in the way of brains.”

Jack grimaced, knowing what would happen but was compelled to say it. “I think you should come back with me, to Silver—”

“Stop.” Her eyes flashed.

“Look what he has you doing. Where is Nines? I don’t know, but I see he’s using you as a shield, so all of Downtown can curse you out and he doesn’t have—”

“Shut up.”

“Monroe ain’t perfect. He got issues — he’s a Ventrue, for one. But—”

“ _ Jack _ ,” snarled Damsel. She stuffed her hat back on and took several steps away. “I think you’ll see you’re in Downtown and, right now, Nines’ orders, the barony’s under lockdown. You ain’t Downtown.” She tried to smirk, but it stiffened into a harder expression. “So, fuck off.”

“Get out, please,” he begged. “Before it’s too late.”

Damsel wrenched him off the backdoor and hurled him into the alley. He transformed mid-flight and beat his wings against the Potence momentum. The backdoor slammed. She had gone back inside.

Jack scratched at the pebbly cement. Animals weren’t equipped for complicated emotions and, maybe, he wasn’t either. He mulled over what he had said, if there were better words he could’ve used, before painfully remembering the advice he had given to Dustin. Maybe he should take his own.

Skelter. Damsel. The Professor. Kanker. Ryuko.

Jack pecked at a curiously bendy bit of plastic. Maybe the night would come when there wasn’t Dustin, or Orsay, or Charlie, or Monroe. But there would still be Jack. Who was Jack? The raven didn’t know. The Gangrel did. Jack kept commitments. He made time for people. He rode a motorcycle. And he did what he could. And, sometimes, it wasn’t enough to do what he wanted.

But it would have to be enough, for him.

Jack took off towards Blue Moon. It wasn’t too late yet. He could still talk to Monroe about Orsay’s fears about the Sabbat in the sewers. God, all those manholes.

The alert almost knocked him out of the sky. Like a seared telepathic message to the brain.  _ Frederick Bale. Daniel Peebody. J.D. Roberts.  _ They crossed the highway into Silver Lake. All… weak licks. Neonates. No. Ghouls. Ventrue. Jack relaxed. That was a close one, but it was only Monroe’s ghouls coming home.


	32. Brimstone

The best thing about being a vampire was the deep dark sleep. Charlie heard it called daysleep, torpor, but it was dreamless and empty and she always woke refreshed. Sometimes, when it was close to dusk, she lingered half-way between sleep and awake, mulling contentedly.

This was not that.

Something was wrong. She pulled herself painfully from the sleep. Her limbs were leaden. Her mind struggled to keep up. Oreo, that damned cat, sat on her chest, clawing. Not clawing like hungry. Desperate. She casually threw an arm across herself and rolled over. Oreo screamed, meowing incessantly.

Then.

She smelled smoke. Why was there smoke? Fire. Terror bubbled up in her, the first genuine feeling in ages. Charlie stuffed it down and spun, confused, in her room. 

It was daylight. She wasn’t supposed to be awake. Exhaustion and frenzy warred for control. The sun. Fire— 

Monroe. The name sent a clear thought to her brain. When she had gone to bed last night, he was still downstairs. Had he stayed? She burst across the hall and stood, frozen. Oreo licked at her heels, mewling. He never shut the drapes in his office windows. Sunlight streamed through them. Golden and bright, glaring off the steel edge of the furniture. And deadly.

Smoke rolled across the ceiling.

Charlie hammered on Monroe’s door. “Get up!” she yelled. The intake of smoke-tinged air made her dead lungs cough. “Blue’s on fire.  _ Please _ .”

She twisted the door again, but it was locked. Keys. She had keys. Charlie ran back and grabbed her keys. The one with the blue tag, the master key. Her hands shook too hard. It scraped the doorknob.

“Wake up, asshole,” she screamed. She couldn’t think further ahead than  _ get Monroe _ . What else would she do? You weren’t supposed to use elevators in emergencies.

The key slid in the lock and the door flew open. Monroe. He had stayed over. Nothing could’ve distinguished him from a corpse, though. No breath, no warmth, completely still. Charlie ripped the blankets off. Any other time, she would’ve laughed at the idea of Monroe in pyjamas.

“Get up,” she yelled again.

Monroe didn’t respond.

Charlie grabbed him by his shoulders, prepared to roll him off the bed or shake him, but his eyes shot open and he grabbed her back, more fiercely. The startled anger gave way to confusion, and then fear. And finally, a calm that Charlie clung to.

“Smoke won’t kill us,” he promised, reaching over for his Blackberry.

“It’s still… there’s sun,” she whispered, trembling.

“Anton,” said Monroe into the smartphone, “get to Blue immediately.”

“Can we wait that long?” she asked as he hung up.

“Damnit,” he muttered to himself. He grabbed the thick fleece blanket off his bed and draped it over her shoulders. “Did anyone else spend the day?” he asked sternly.

Charlie trembled but managed to shake her head. He pulled the blanket tighter and over her head.

“Go to the elevator. Take it to the main floor. Go out the  _ back _ door, not the front. There’s a sewer — fuck.” He shut his eyes again and fought for an idea. “Out the back door, then across the street, the alley between Starbucks and that boutique. Hide in the shadows. Wait for me, wait for Ritter.”

“You’re — You’re not supposed to use elevators in emergencies,” she stammered.

“Do as I say,” said Monroe gently. “I’ll follow you shortly.”

“But—”

“Charlie. You are a very brave woman. Don’t forget yourself here.”

Charlie grabbed the edges of the blanket. She vibrated painfully with questions. How was she supposed to cross a street? Broad daylight. Sunset Junction was open to the sky —  _ the sun _ . Cars. 

One step at a time. She was brave. The blanket trailed behind her on the ground. She kept her eyes on her feet as she ran down the hall. Oreo tangled in her feet. The brief burning warmth urged her to throw off the blanket, embrace the radiance of the sun. It was just fire. Fire so far away, deep in space.

Charlie smacked into the wall. The walls were cool. The light didn’t reach the corner.

Elevator. She hit the button. Oreo yowled. And coughed. Not supposed to use elevators. She had never heard a cat cough.

It dinged. Clouds of smoke smothered the ceiling as it opened. A security man came in it, his clothes tattered and burned. He wore a chunky utility belt and staggered, coughing. 

Monroe appeared at the end of the hall. He beamed. “You still pull double shifts on Saturdays, don’t you, Dawson?” he asked.

“Sir,” said Dawson wildly, looking from Charlie to him, “you’re supposed to be dead.”

“I am,” agreed Monroe. “Shut the drapes.”

Dawson did as he was told and the drapes shuttered out light. He coughed again.

Monroe sighed and crossed the newly blackened room. “Dawson. This just isn’t your day, I’m afraid. You’re going to go downstairs with myself and Charlie here — yes, she’s dead, too — and fetch my car from the lot. Pull right up to the back door.”

“I knew it,” said Dawson, the raspy words desperate. “I knew you weren’t dead, sir. Of course, I’ll get you out of here, sir.”

Monroe put a guiding arm around him and pushed the three of them into the elevator. The cat followed, coughing more. It looked to be full of fog, but Charlie knew it was smoke. She held her breath and then realised how stupid she was. She didn’t breathe. She was dead.

Charlie reached for Monroe’s hand. She could be embarrassed later.

Dawson dry-heaved the duration of the short ride, stumbling out like a drunk at the main floor. He took Monroe’s keys and went for it.

Charlie stared at the main floor. The mirrors on the far wall had shattered. Most of the tables turned to kindling. Metal stools twisted like modern art or snapped into shrapnel. The bar had been completely destroyed, glass carpeting the floor. The sound system and lights lay in a tangle of metal. She could hear the fire and, as she peered around the corner, glimpsed it. An orange monster, licking and leering up the wall, feasting on the alcohol and wallpaper. The only monster greater than the Beast.

Monroe dragged her back and forced her to face him. There was no fear there. “Don’t look,” he said shortly. “Don’t think. Just stay still, and do. One more minute and we move.”

“It looks like a bomb went off,” she said hoarsely.

“It does.” He picked up the coughing cat and thrust Oreo in her arms.

“What about the stuff? Snake beer and… bloodwine. My stuff.”

“We can come back at dusk.”

Charlie felt her knees weaken again. She felt like a sapling, bending over in the wind. She needed a garden stake.

“Follow me,” said Monroe.

She followed. She gripped his hand like her life depended on it — and it did. He dragged her across the rubble of the bar and the dance floor. Later, she could feel the glass in her bare feet, Oreo’s scratches on her arms. Don’t think. Just do. Past the kitchens. Grease and oil and  _ fire _ — no think. The heat, just on the other side of the kitchen doors. 

Monroe roughly pulled the blanket over her head and directed her. A heavy fire door swung open. Charlie was trapped in the world of the heated blanket, not thinking, not feeling. Just doing. Following.

She was outside. In the daylight.

Car doors opened.

Briefly, the direction of Monroe’s arms left her, then pulled her from the front. She found the ledge of the SUV and stepped in, slamming the door.

Dawson coughed and the car took off.

Charlie peeked out. “Can I—”

Monroe slammed the divider between the backseat and the front. “Now, you can.”

The windows, so darkly tinted they were almost black. The same black glass between the front and back. Charlie had made fun of him for it. She could barely make out Blue Moon through the windows. It gave one more layer between her and the fire. The sun. But her life, everything she had, was on the wrong side. She laid a hand on the window. It burned intensely, warmed by the sun. Oreo burst from her clawed grip and hid in the footwell.

Monroe pulled her back from the window and Charlie collapsed into his arms. The terror was mostly passed. Exhaustion threatened to win. She took a fistful of his t-shirt just to feel it. 

“Where am I going, sir?” asked Dawson, but the words only brought on another vicious coughing fit.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” he snapped.

“Sir, it’s so good to have you back,” said Dawson, choking. He sounded like he might cry.

“Quiet.” Monroe dialed a number. “Ritter. Charlie and myself are safe and on the move. I need you to get ahold of your master… Yes. Yes, I understand he gave you to me, but… No. I need him. Let me take the fallout for this, but he will want to talk.”

Maybe it was her mind slowing down, trying to fall back into her unfinished daysleep. Charlie peered up at Monroe. “I thought Ritter was your ghoul. Oh, God.”

He hadn’t grabbed any cover for himself. The sun, even a brief moment, had fried him like a lobster, worse than any sunburn Charlie had ever seen. Skin peeled off his hands, blackened. His hair, now that she breathed again, smelled charred.

“Don’t worry about it.” Monroe stroked her through the blanket, starting at her hair and flowing down her back. He shut his eyes and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who did this. I don’t know  _ why _ . But, you are going to come along for a wild ride.”

His phone rang.

“Apparently, Ritter is persuasive,” he mused before answering. “Hello, sir. I… Yes, Blue Moon has burned down. I will have a full report by the end of tonight. For the meantime…” He grimaced and shut his eyes, as though it took everything he had to speak. “I seek your assistance by the Ethic of Succor, cousin.”

A moment later, the call ended and Monroe gave an address to Dawson. Charlie fought her sleepiness and sat up.

“That’s Downtown,” she managed. “Did… Was that Barty?”

Monroe pressed his phone to his lips. “No. You’ll meet him. For now, you can sleep. I’ll take care of you.” 

He stroked her more gently as she settled against him, unable to keep her eyes open. They fluttered. She blinked back to awareness. “No. I…”

“Do you know why people are told to not use elevators in a fire?” asked Monroe in a calm, soothing voice. His fingers rested on her shoulder. “The reason you are not supposed to use elevators in emergencies is so they are available for firefighters and other first responders. The fire can also affect electricity, or the shaft can fill rapidly with smoke. In other emergency situations…”

Charlie gave into the encroaching darkness and let it have her. She faded gratefully into the blackness of daysleep, his voice a distant lull.

When she pried her eyelids open, they creaked with their usual alertness. Like the last night had been a bad dream. But it wasn’t. She woke in a strange bed, a strange room. The fleece blanket had been tucked around her. Black tarp stapled over the windows, but it looked like dusk.

She sniffed. No fire. The only smoke came from the blanket. It curled in her fists. She was alone. No Oreo. 

There was no personality in the room. Like no one lived there. No desk, no posters, no dresser. Just bare floor and a single bed. Charlie padded across the floor. The closet, on the other hand, the closet was something else. It looked like it belonged to twenty people. Lab coats, uniforms for construction, police, jeans pre-stained with mud and crisp slacks. Bags of drycleaning. Dusty workboots and sneakers and dress shoes.

What the fuck was this place?

A chair scraped across the floor downstairs. Charlie quietly closed the closet and stepped into the hall. Over the railing, she could hear voices. It was Monroe.

“An attack on me is an attack on them. They will help me—”

“Do what?” snapped another man. The voice was ice cold and had a heavy accent. Like Ritter’s. “Take vengeance? Justice? What word are you putting to this fit of pique? Listen to yourself, Matthew.”

Monroe groaned. “I cannot let this go unanswered. It makes me appear weak, not only to him, but to Westside as well. One clean execution, that’s all.”

“A murder of your own warrants a whip, but a bit of burned hair is an execution, now? Calm yourself and think rationally.”

“I am,” shouted Monroe. Charlie recoiled from the voice and wondered if the other man did, too. “I am,” he said, at a more reasonable volume. “This conflict over Los Angeles has gone on too long and there are too many sides. One must be eliminated. This is as good an excuse as any.” He lowered his voice and drummed a finger on the table. “I can do this.”

“Can, you may, but you clearly won’t without my… approval.” There was a smile in the voice and not a nice one.

“ _ Approval _ has nothing to do with this. Now, you tell me there are six forces vying for Los Angeles and you won’t  _ approve _ of destruction of one of them?” asked Monroe incredulously. “One who attempted to kill your investment?”

“You might be interested to know it is now dusk,” the man said wearily. “Your fledgling will be awake.” As Monroe walked away from him, the man added, “Have you thought of what to tell her?”

Monroe stepped around the corner and looked up to see Charlie, clutching the wooden rail. His face froze and collapsed.

“No,” she said loudly. “I don’t think he has.”

As she came down, he came up to meet her. His fingers wrapped around her elbow and his eyes pleaded.

“Be careful with him,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m glad you look well.”

Monroe marched her into the kitchen downstairs. A man sat in a kitchen just as barren and impersonal as the bedroom. Everything was too clean, sanitized, disused. Like it wasn’t really a house. Oreo sat on the kitchen table, purring and content as a loaf.

Charlie didn’t know what she expected from the man, but the clearly very old vampire wasn’t it. His skin was papery white, almost translucent, and his unblinking blue eyes studied her intimately. He sat with a glass of what looked to be whiskey, but stood when she entered.

“I’m meeting the vampire king and I don’t even have shoes,” she said with a jerky smile.

The man didn’t smile. After a moment, he extended a hand. She shook and dropped it quickly. Subtly, he indicated the chair Monroe had just stormed out of. She felt him stand behind her as she sat.

“I am not a king,” said the stranger.

Charlie leaned into the feeling of Monroe’s hands on her shoulders. “Okay. Do you got a name?”

The stranger glanced to Monroe. “Do you want to do this or should I?”

Monroe pulled a third chair out of the table and sat with a pained expression. “This is… one of the people I admire most in this world.”

The stranger chuckled dryly and drank. “Flattery does not appeal to me.”

“If I tell her what you are, she won’t listen to the rest of it.”

“She’s your childe.”

“Exactly. I have not been responsible for all of her education. LA, despite present circumstances,  _ is _ still Anarch.”

“ _ She _ is sitting right here,” said Charlie loudly.

Monroe turned back to her. He looked a little better since his run-in with the sun. He must’ve stayed up the rest of the day, feeding. And arguing.

“He is a good man,” said Monroe sincerely. “He wants what is best for our kind, to protect and provide a place for our people to grow and prosper. Like me. He is also Ventrue.”

“I got that one. He’s also old.” Charlie risked another look to apologize, but the stranger seemed peripherally amused. “Do you trust him?” she asked Monroe.

“With my life.”

Charlie swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay. I’m with you.”

Monroe stuttered like a bad record. “What?”

“You… saved me from Garica. Bella. You pulled me out of a burning building, into sunlight.” She folded her hands and tried hard to avoid looking at the stranger. “If you don’t want to tell me, I don’t need to know.”

The stranger stood and pulled a bottle of whiskey from an otherwise empty cabinet. “Valorant,” he said. “The Malkavian condition precludes itself to decisions no other would.”

“Are we safe here?” she asked Monroe.

He blinked, dazed and confused. “I — Yes. Yes, we are. I asked for assistance by the Ethic of Succor. Jan will honour it.”

Jan. Charlie absorbed the odd name. She thought the Westside Prince had some French name. And, then it came to her. Rhys had mentioned some… Scandanavian archon. Jan Peter… Something. Archon to a big hoity-toity Ventrue Camarilla from the Old Country. And she looked at Jan again with new eyes. He refreshed his drink, back to her. Tentatively, she reached across the Cobweb and tried to find his string. Would he notice?

No. No, he would not.

Charlie didn’t grab it. She couldn’t lose herself here. Just a lick, a brief poke. An image slammed in her head. Jan, sitting at an old desk, the windows outside grey and rain-streaked. A river. Cobblestones. And an unmarked VHS tape. One emotion hung heavy. One she knew well: exhausted terror.

Charlie swallowed and ripped herself back to the present. That was profoundly unhelpful.  _ Profoundly? _ Jan’s string left a bad taste in her mouth.

Shit. Monroe was talking.

“... can’t let you not know. Not after tonight — to _ day _ . There is a line.” His eyes narrowed. “Charlie, are you listening?”

“Yes,” she said mildly. “A line.”

“A line, a path. Everyone is connected to someone, by mutual desire or ambition, or Blood, or protection.”

She smiled pleasantly. “Like a web.”

“Exactly.” Some of the worry left his eyes, but Charlie’s smile faded. He didn’t get what she meant. “Justin can tell you, if he wants, but I came to owe the Prince of Baltimore a lifeboon to save him. It amounts to slavery. A lifeboon entitles the holder to demand… everything. Anything. Noncompliance is punished severely in the Camarilla.”

Charlie shuffled uncomfortably. That was why  _ The Vampire Dictionary _ had a note under lifeboon to never utilize it. Supposedly, it was given for saving a life — which was why vampires were so selfish. No one wanted to start a trend of altruism if it meant possibly losing themselves.

Monroe glanced to Jan. “Am I wrong?”

Jan sipped his drink and looked like something about it or his answer didn’t taste good. “No.”

“By Ventrue tradition,” he continued, “I had the opportunity to pass it to an elder of my choosing.”

“And you chose the archon of Hardestadt?” said Charlie with a raised eyebrow. “Childe of the Camarilla and…” She screwed up her face as she spotted the phrase scrawled inside the cupboard behind like, like a penknife in a tree. “Beeherder of Amsterdam? Do you… like bees? Oh. Amsterdam. That explains the river.”

“Beheerder,” corrected Jan with a curious look. “Steward, maybe. Many smaller cities in Europe don’t have princes, but stewards sworn to a prince, then sworn to a state’s overlord.” He added to Monroe, “How are you finding Malkavian counsel?”

“Never boring,” said Monroe wryly. He sobered and said to Charlie, “Are you sure you’re alright? The Camarilla—”

“Why should I care?” she asked, shaking her head. “You’re someone I can trust. Everything says it.”

“Who?” he asked, bewildered.

Charlie scratched her head, blinking against the sudden sharp jolt. “No one. Just, things. Signs. What did you mean, before? That there were six forces fighting over the city.”

“The imposter LaCroix in Westside,” said Jan. “The Camarilla of the Valley. The Sabbat. The Anarchs. And the Middle Kingdom.” He swirled and took a heavy drink.

That was five. Charlie was a Malkavian, but she could count.

“Is that a new gang?” she asked.

“Our Eastern cousins,” said Jan with no familial tones. “They have settled along America’s west coast and I hear they are antagonizing Sabbat in Latin America, too. As to why they have left their ancestral homelands, I do not know. But, as far as we know, they are kindred — whatever origins they may proclaim. They drink blood, flee sun and fire, and hide from mortals. The Ashirra, a sect of Cainites as far east as India, war with them over the far and south east Asia.”

“Are they a threat?” asked Charlie hesitatingly.

“Barty thought so,” said Monroe. “He handed the San Francisco Bay over because the Middle Kingdom spread, prolifically, and violently. Oakland and Berkely fell in nights, wiped off the map like the Shadow Curtain fell again.”

“And you can drive them back?” she asked Jan.

“This is an early infestation,” he said. “From my intelligence, Nines Rodriguez is making an attempt to destroy them. I have no reason to believe Anarchs can’t, at this stage.”

“Intelligence,” she repeated dimly. “You got… spies.”

“People who owe me, or people who owe people who owe me. It is the way of things. The line Matthew mentioned.”

Charlie’s eyes slid to Monroe, who had gone still as a rock. And he wouldn’t look at her.

“Jack told me late last night about Nines,” he admitted.

“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Okay.” She scratched Oreo behind the ears. “Have you told him a lot?”

Jan dragged his chair and turned hers with a deft hand and surprising strength. When he sat, their knees touched. She could look nowhere else. Her hands tied knots in her lap.

“A lifeboon is gravely serious,” said Jan coldly. “Honour is the highest calling of Ventrue. If you have known Matthew any notable length of time, and I believe you have, you will know he would not dishonour himself, his clan, or its customs. He made a difficult but necessary decision. And the right one. Do not dare think less of him for it. The Camarilla —  _ my _ Camarilla — would have won regardless. Matthew has shortened this war, potentially by years, saving countless immortal and mortal lives.”

“Why did you kill everyone in the Valley, then?” she said, unable to hold back her anger.

“Charlie,” said Monroe warningly, but Jan lifted a finger and he silenced.

“It was necessary,” said Jan.

“Bullshit. The Reapers lost eight. Who knew how many other gangs were just wiped out? And Tinseltown? What did you say before, Monroe, about Garcia? That when he took Bella, he—” Charlie stopped short. “Six. Six forces. Six. Six. Six. Five. Valley. Westside. Anarchs. Sabbat. Kingdom. Six. Oh, God.” She turned to Jan with a look of horror. “He  _ owes  _ you.”

Jan sighed and spoke to Monroe. “No secret is safe in a Malkavian. Their connection to others of the clan ensures it.”

“There is no elder in LA that could possibly read her mind like that,” said Monroe desperately.

“Regardless, I cannot risk it.”

Charlie lurched back in her seat, as far as it would go, away from Jan. “What’re you going to do to me?”

“I will take the last half hour,” said Jan smoothly. “Do not worry. I will be gentle. You will go right back to sleep and awake in — perhaps Matthew’s house. You won’t remember a thing.”

His lips kept moving, but his voice no longer came from them. It lived in her head, soaking through her eyes instead of her ears. It wasn’t natural. But it sounded so reasonable—

“Stop it,” shouted Monroe. “If you take it from her, I will just tell her again.”

Charlie tried to stagger her way back to awareness, but her mind felt like a bowl of Jell-O. God, she missed Jell-O. All food.

Jan frowned. It was the most extreme emotion Charlie had seen from him yet. “You will not.”

“I did not sire her,” said Monroe heavily, “but she is my childe. It is improper conduct between Ventrue to use the Gifts of Caine on another’s childer, especially pertaining to business or rivalries.”

Jan stood and leaned over Monroe’s chair. Heated whispers were exchanged. Charlie slid off the chair bonelessly. Her head smacked, melon-like, on the tile. She didn’t register the jolt of pain for moments more. “Ow.”

She pulled herself back to her chair, wincing. A pair of arms helped her. Monroe.

“Did all those people need to die for you to be prince?” she mumbled, holding her head.

The strain in his eyes told her more than his mouth did. He hadn’t ordered it. He didn’t know. And yet, it hung. Heavy. The broken crown. The price he hadn’t paid, but he would enjoy the product. Thirty pieces of silver, tumbling from a blue basket, forced to sword and scepter and crown. 

“Probably not,” he said.

“It is a balancing act,” said Jan tensely. “Think, for one moment, of the hideous turnover in fledglings among Anarchs. Letting this chaos continue one more year — even letting Anarchs run wild through the Downtown Barony is more than should be bore by any. More than have died in the purges.”

Oreo, startled by Charlie’s fall to the floor, resettled on her lap. As Charlie ran her fingers through the cat’s black fur, the smell of smoke wafted. She stopped petting him.

“Who… Who tried to kill us?” she asked calmly. Too calmly. Like this was normal. Like anything about this was normal. Normal, for a vampire, was D&D and night surfing and avoiding LA traffic by sleeping all day.

“Matthew has some theories,” said Jan dryly.

“They are facts,” snapped Monroe. “Fact One: no Anarch would do something as underhanded and subtle as attempting to assassinate with a bomb—”

“Bombs are now subtle,” said Jan with a raised eyebrow.

“If Nines wanted me dead, he would’ve sent a hitman,” said Monroe, more loudly. He stood and began to pace, hands curling and uncurling into fists. “Fact Two: the Middle Kingdom is entirely locked in Nines’ domain. Fact Three.” He cracked his neck as he wound himself into a rage. “This type of ploy is entirely personal, attacked where I work, the center of my domain. Camarilla. Fact Four: I would have heard of incoming attacks from Westside. Zari says the seneschal is indisposed—”

“He knows about Zari?” asked Charlie, open-mouthed.

“Yes!” Monroe rounded on her with a terrible gleam in his eye. Oreo fled Charlie’s lap and skittered into the hall. “Assume he knows everything! Now—”

“You were on Fact Five,” said Jan. His calm, piercingly heavy gaze felt a lot more… normal Monroe. The corner of his mouth quirked when he noticed she stared.

Unwilling, a growl left Monroe. “Five,” he said, even more loudly. “It was not Barty. If  _ you _ had finished with me, you would’ve staked me for dawn like the foul traitor I am. Fact Six: I offended Fortier’s pride when I didn’t let him take Hawthorne for her tour.”

“A Ventrue never would’ve acted alone,” started Jan, but when he took a breath, Monroe ploughed on.

“He is Sebastian LaCroiz’s sire,” shouted Monroe. “Fortier told me he sired a whelp on a battlefield in Belgium. Zari says LaCroix tells his own story after Waterloo.”

For a moment, Jan froze. Then, quite suddenly, he drained his almost-full drink in one and brushed by Monroe to reach the cupboard again.

“Nothing to say?” demanded Monroe. He tore a frenzied hand through his hair and it stood up. Charlie had never seen him this unhinged.

“Well.” Jan poured another sizable drink. “You have found something I did not yet know. Congratulations. Do you want me to tell you to take vengeance? Do you wish my aid in planning an assault? Pardon me, but I do not abide by or assist children.”

“Children?” said Monroe, mouth gaping.

Jan turned back to Monroe. “Do what you want,” he said curtly. “You will anyway, I am sure. By the Ethic, I owe you three nights succor and sustenance in safety. I owe you no more. This is no business of mine.” He glanced to Charlie. “Are you hungry? You have quite a delightful cat, by the way.”

Charlie nodded, wide-eyed. “I could eat.”

“I have found sous vide to be the best method of reheating cold blood,” said Jan, reaching into a fridge that had been outfitted with custom shelving to hold bags of blood. “Microwave will do, though.”

Monroe’s eyes flicked darkly between them. “ _ Anyone _ could’ve been in Blue. Fortier’s association with LaCroix isn’t known publicly. The longer that partnership continues, however subtle, the more dangerous it could be for us. For all of us. I cannot and will not let that go.”

“Clearly,” said Jan with a calm that only infuriated Monroe more. He pulled the chipped white office mug from the microwave and passed to Charlie. “I am done talking about this, Matthew. Take my advice or don’t, but do not speak aimlessly and attempt to sway yourself into thinking your vengeance is justice. Do not. It is beneath you.”

“He…” Monroe swallowed, and turned on the spot, scraping his hands down his face. 

Charlie curled on the chair in her corner, a deep dark pit in her stomach only growing deeper and darker. She sipped. The blood was bitter, acrid, like cheap coffee. Pained and fearful.

“How is that?” asked Jan, sitting opposite her.

“Tastes shit.”

That corner of his mouth twitched. Some of the coldness came away. He nursed his drink more slowly.

Charlie shook her head in wonder, anxious to move away from thinking and watching Monroe. “How can you do that?”

Jan grimaced. “The Blood is put to many purposes. At dusk, when you awaken, it flows through our muscles, our brain, so that we continue in this facsimile of life. By direction, we can channel it to make other parts operate as though they lived — lungs to breathe, skin to flush, sexual organs to perform. Many discover the latter by worn instinct, and the flushing through practice. Continuing to consume mortal food and drink is a complex order and expensive, by the hunger. Moreso, even, than the most out-of-clan Discipline.” He took another sip.

“You’re showing off,” she said thinly.

“It is a small pleasure. This world is too harsh to practice fruitless self-denial.”

Monroe braced himself against the chair, head hung low. “Charlie almost died,” he said in a small, broken voice. “I… I know you think this is about me, Jan, but it isn’t. It  _ isn’t _ . Even Zach, an aged neonate, he’s… I always said I didn’t know what I would do if one of them died. Now, I know. And I’m so sorry I do.” He took a shuddering breath and stood, looking anything but Monroe: shoulders slouched and weak, face drawn and open. “Carthage.”

“Get some sleep,” said Jan gently. “You haven’t slept today.”

“Neither have you,” accused Monroe. He winced. “I still have things I need to do. Dawson—”

“Ritter is taking care of him,” said Jan.

“Blue Moon—”

“Ritter is taking care of it.”

“I need to call Miss Hawthorne.”

“Ritter has already done that.” Jan smiled thinly. “Did you think I would give you an incompetant? Go. Rest.”

Oreo poked his little head around the corner and meowed loudly.

“Shit,” said Charlie, setting her drink aside. “I didn’t feed him tonight. Wait. Did Ritter do that?”

Jan chuckled. “No. Ritter did not feed your cat. He was quite busy enough.”

“Thank you, Jan,” said Monroe heavily. “I… I probably should sleep some. Not long.” He hesitated in the door, spent. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve done nothing to me,” said Jan pleasantly.

Monroe opened his mouth again but grimaced and headed back upstairs. Charlie finished the terrible blood and burned her tongue on it. “I should go, too.”

“May I ask something first?” asked Jan. He must’ve seen the shot of fear Charlie felt, because he raised his hand. “You are free to go. You are no prisoner. Monroe is right, in his own way. You are his charge, if not his progeny.”

Charlie settled back down like the chair could blow up and take the safehouse’s kitchen with them. “What?”

“It has been some time since I’ve sought Malkavian counsel,” he said, “but needs must. And secrets must. When I told you I am the Steward of Amsterdam, you said, ‘That explains the river.’ What did you see?”

She curled inward. She didn’t like it when people treated her like a crystal ball, her visions too serious. “Just. Nothing. You were at a desk. Raining. The river was full.” The small relief that passed through Jan’s tense shoulders made her want to stop, but she found her lips moving again. “You had a VHS. Were looking at it.”

It was just a flash. Like lightning. It illuminated something, a ghost’s echo of fear in the elder. Then, it passed, and the tense calm storm remained.

“Did you see what was on it?” he asked.

She shook her head rapidly.

“Good. Don’t. If you do, I will be forced to take action.”

Swiftly, he stood and took his drink with him. Somehow, he looked as weary and spent as Monroe, who had gone through a homicidal sleep-deprived rage. Charlie pulled her legs up on the chair. She rested her chin on her knees.


	33. Carthage

It was an old legend, a myth from the age of the blood gods. Ventrue and Brujah remembered it different, of course. The swift and decisive end to the Brujah Wars. A single battle. Brujah claimed Carthage was Constantinople before the Triumvirate got there: a place where humans and kindred lived in harmony. Ventrue claimed the city was a site of infernal sacrifice and devilry. For the good of all, it must be destroyed. And it was. Ventrue did not do things part-way. The kindred were staked along the road for the sun. The city was pulled to rubble. Cattle burned and put to the sword. Malkavians and Tzimisce used sorcery to trap the Brujah ancients under the salted earth. 

It was where the Camarilla vision of purges came from.

Monroe’s ancestor, Lysander, had awoken his sire Artemis Orthia from torpor to destroy Carthage. He wondered if she was proud of him.

Ashley had needed more persuading to supply explosives than Monroe had thought. At last, tired of him, Monroe had turned to Rubio. That was the first of many hugs and concerns. They put the word out, discreet, for the domain to rally around Medusa. The restaurant was not yet open to humans, all the better.

Monroe could’ve made a speech. When they all came — all of them — he weathered their hugs, their anger, their fear. He made it his own. They were his and he was theirs. Jan didn’t get it. How could he? 

All Monroe said, when they had all settled down, was, “Someone set fire to Blue Moon in the day. Charlie and I barely escaped. I know who it was. And I’m going to go rip it out of him. Anyone want to come?”

It was a rhetorical question. Almost everyone did. Monroe took the Reapers, Azalea’s Hollowmen, and Jack. Jack had been the first to cry and, straggled, the story came out. How he felt Ventrue ghouls cross the nets and figured they were Monroe’s. It was not his fault. But he felt like it was, and so Monroe offered the attempt to make amends. He passed the weepy Gangrel over to Charlie, who was almost flattened when the hug toppled them to the ground.

To the Anarchs, Fortier was out of line. This was not gang warfare. And it needed to be answered. They had made their choice of Ventrue and would see it to the bitter end.

Azalea, Monroe knew, felt different. She understood him better, he thought. It was not a comforting thought, but Monroe did not need comfort.

He needed sizable amounts of explosives, gasoline, and guns.

Fortier’s manor sat in an expensive and exclusive neighbourhood. These were not places accustomed to several dark cars pulling up in the dead of night and opening fire. Silencers and the shadows handled most of it. By the time neighbours noticed the score of dead ghouls, they would be long gone.

Fortier had expected retribution, for Monroe to play the game of Ventrue rivalry, of the Danse Macabre. He hadn’t expected a massacre. Monroe needed to end it before more of his childer or his domain paid the price for his mercy.

“Who the fuck tries to kill a fledgling like a burning building?” growled Orion.

“A bastard who doesn’t care about conventions of war,” said Azalea, startling both of them. The Reapers and Hollowmen would never be bosom friends, but stiff allies could be dealt with. Regardless, Monroe felt better with Azalea next to him.

“Fire’s off limits,” said Slater. He spat at a dying ghoul. “Be a man. Fight with guns and the Blood and shit.”

“Any one of us could’ve been in there,” said Crow, still dazed. “Fucking  _ Blue _ , man.”

“If there had been one more,” said Monroe, shaking his head. “One more lick, and I don’t think we could’ve gotten out.” He turned to Azalea. “How is Flores’ Dominate?”

“More than adequate for their task,” she assured him.

Azalea had prepared to rip the front door off, but Orion took a running charge first. The door flew off its hinges and pierced the grand staircase.

“Ghouls, we don’t mean you harm,” shouted Monroe. “If you don’t get on the ground, though, I can’t speak for what we will do to you.” He nodded to the Reapers, who split and searched the main floor. There would be spoils. Anarchs and Sabbat expected spoils of battle: wealth and blood. Any living ghouls would not return to human lives.

Azalea followed Monroe closely as they ascended. The house was as opulent as he remembered. Hallmark of Camarilla excess. Arrogance. Louis Fortier’s essence seeped into the walls and made Monroe growl.

“Have you had dealings with him, before?” asked Azalea in a low voice. “This clanmate?”

“I offered him a place with us,” said Monroe. The memory curled his lip. “I promised peace.”

She nodded sagely. A door in front of them burst through with force. “And so meet fire with sunlight.”

House ghouls raised their hands, trembling. Shadows pushed them flat on the floor and they screamed at the darkness — though, unhurt. Down below, the Reapers shouted to each other as they found things of interest. Cash. Valuables. Blood. Gasoline. The smell began to drift upwards as it poured across the fine woods and drapery.

All there was to find was scared ghouls. And then, there was only one door left. It broke as easily as the others. A pair of women shrieked. Azalea took care of them, with speed and grace. A shard of broken door drove through each of their chests with enough force to pin them to the wall, paralyzed.

“Nice job,” said Monroe, thankful she was on his side.

It was the master bedroom, achingly perfect and dated. A four poster bed, paintings, an electric fireplace. Monroe kicked open the door to the master bathroom and found Fortier. The stolid and stocky man fired. It was only a bullet and Monroe prepared himself to take it, but a lash of shadow blocked it like a sword. It  _ tinked _ away.

Fortier dropped the pistol backed away against the sink. “Stop, cousin,” he said. His smile was charming but his eyes flickered anxiously. A windowless room was safe, but it was also a dead end. “Come. We can talk — I don’t —” He barked a laugh. “I don’t even know what you’re here for!”

Monroe grabbed him by the neck and dragged him into the bedroom, against the wall. The Raufoss pistol pressed tight against his throat. Fortier spotted the women, two of his childer.

“You killed my wives!” he snarled.

“Not yet,” said Monroe calmly. The angrier Fortier became, the more he fed on it. “I am still debating — whether I let the Hollowmen eat them, or leave them staked in a burning building.”

Azalea scoffed. “Don’t let Silas hear you say that. Diablerie is a tough habit to break.”

“Fine, then.” Monroe shot twice. The incendiary bullets hit the women, flames spreading through the dry and flammable kindred flesh. Moments later, the fire smoldered on their clothes; bones and the improvised stake clattering to the floor.

Fortier wailed and struggled. When Monroe’s strength failed to be enough, he found the shadows helped. “We have lived in this house for one hundred twenty years,” said Fortier. “Every problem has always come from filth.”

“Filth,” said Monroe amicably.

Fortier bared his teeth, but it was desperate, a wounded animal. “Disgraces to the clan. Bad blood, bad human stock. They rotted the Camarilla from within. Ventrue siring the negro, the woman, the Jew, the homosexual, the lower class. And now you —  _ you _ . Common scum. Caitiff.” He struggled mightily against the deep shadow. “ _ And Catholics _ ,” he cursed at Azalea. 

Monroe could, he realised. It was Garcia all over again. No one would begrudge him. This was Monroe’s spoil. Diablerie. This was Louis Fortier, a reluctant bougie feature of the Los Angeles Anarch scene who proved the cape everyone “knew” he was. 

But that was not a habit Monroe wanted to begin.

He stepped back. “Take him with us.”

The shadows dragged Fortier, howling and wailing after his childer. Monroe shot the bones again for good measure as they passed, eliciting a stream of ugly French and tears. The sounds that came from Fortier as they came down the stairs were beyond pitiful. Animalistic, but human in their agony.

And then he smelled the gasoline. 

Fortier seemed to remember he was Ventrue. “ _ Let go of me _ ,” he shouted to Azalea, who flinched at the command and obeyed.

Fortier clawed at the railings, but Monroe grabbed him by the hair and dragged him backwards down the stairs. “Any more of this old bastard’s childer still around?” he asked Azalea.

“I’m sure Erik and Silas tore her to shreds,” she said, smirking. “Reckon they’re all dead.”

Fortier lost some of his strength and let himself be dragged, by shadow and Monroe, down the stairs.

Orion came back around the corner. “Hey, Monroe, didn’t find him, not yet. We’re trying to find the keys to the garage — oh shit. That’s him?” He raised his voice and hollered back, “Monroe found him.”

The rest of the Reapers appeared. Slater hefted a backpack bulging with ornaments and jewelry. Crow headed back upstairs with the rest of the gasoline they had brought.

“Clear out the ghouls,” Monroe told him as he passed.

“Aye, aye, captain.”

Monroe tried to throw Fortier to the ground, but the shadow tendrils, unsuspecting, lashed him tighter and choked him. Azalea pressed him to the ground. Fortier still wore pyjamas. It was early in the night. The floorboards under them was slick with gas. The smell, chemical and acrid and terrifying, filled their nostrils.

Fortier rolled over. “He’s a Camarilla spy! He told me — told me when he came here. He’s been lying to all of you.” He turned to Orion. “I’ll give you the keys, blood, women—”

Orion kicked him in the face. Slater whooped, but Monroe extended an arm to calm them. This was not the whipping. He did not need them all to partake in his sins.

“A boon,” burst Fortier as Monroe raised the gun. “Aubaine de la vie! Lifeboon. Let me live and — and I am yours.” His smile flickered desperately. “Capitaine.”

It was tempting. Moreso even than the diablerie. If he had the influence and contact with his estranged childe in Westside that Monroe thought, it would be valuable. But Anarchs did not tolerate lifeboons and slavery.

The idea Jan would want Monroe to take it made him pull the trigger.

The gasoline slicked on Fortier’s face lit and devoured him before he had the chance to scream. Only smoldering clothes and ash remained, moments later.

It did not provide him relief. It left him cold.

Monroe would like to be the bigger man. He would like to pretend he was Jan, who surely would find no pleasure in the grisly act. Only practical relief from doing what needed be done. But he was not Jan. He would carry the brief flash of primal horror in Fortier’s eyes until his final nights. And he would relish it.

That night in Blue Moon had been far, far too close to allow anything else.

Azalea appraised the gun. “Tell Rubio I would like ten of those.”

Crow appeared at the top of the stairs, herding ghouls like the world’s best sheepdog. They came down in a stampede, crying and whimpering as their bonds to Fortier shattered.

“Treat them with dignity,” said Monroe to Azalea, knowing she would take the lion’s share. “I know you care nothing for humans, but they are servants, not slaves. And, right now, they are people. Not enemies.”

She sneered and went to help Crow manage the flock of masterless ghouls. But she would heed him.

“Hey,” said Orion gently. “Are you alright?”

Monroe raised an eyebrow. “Fine. Let’s deal with the house quickly.”

Once it was raided for everything of value not too bulky, heavy, or nailed down, a few matches thrown took care of the rest. Orion did find the car keys in the end. A good thing, too, as they never would’ve managed to get all the house ghouls without resorting to sticking some in the trunks. 

Carthage still stood — the wealth of the land had not been salted.

Anarchs still talked about that gang that broke into Disneyland after hours, without asking permission. They would talk of this, too.

They met up with the rest of the Hollowmen at an industrial lookout some miles from Disneyland. But they were late. The detonators had already been pressed. Miles away, the fires burned, devouring Main Street and licking up the park.

Flores watched the fires from outside her car. Jack paced restlessly as a cougar. Monroe knew he would not want to be at the house; initiating violence was not Jack’s strong suit. Neither was domestic terrorism, but he wanted to play a part.

Jack brushed against Monroe’s leg and looked towards the multitude of stolen cars, still full of people. His form flickered and he transformed to two legs, still pacing.

“Ghouls,” said Monroe. “Fortier’s. He’s dead. Their bonds are broken. We’re taking them back to Medusa and I want you and Rubio to ensure they are treated well.”

Orion almost walked off the edge of the overlook. A press of shadow held him back. Monroe took the shadow’s place and pulled Orion backwards.

“This should get them to take you serious,” said Orion in a shaking voice. “Are you alright?” he asked for the tenth time.

“I’m fine,” Monroe assured him. “Better than I’ve been the last forty-eight hours.”

Orion relaxed. “That’s good. That’s good.”

Slater and Crow whooped behind them, arguing over the spoils of the house. When the fires hit a gas valve or licked up the rollercoaster on the horizon, they cheered.

Jack wouldn’t look at the fire. He paced around their parked cars. “Clean,” he said, mostly to himself. “That’s good. No kine needed to die for this shit.”

“This shit?” repeated Slater. He barked a laugh. “This is LA, brother. What’d you do if some Cammy Vent fucker tried to kill you and the kid?”

Jack shrugged. “Nothing different, I guess. I—” He looked to Monroe mournfully. “Life’s ugly. I just don’t like celebrating when you gotta hit ugly with ugly.”

A new car crunched up the gravel road. The last two of the Hollowmen. Fortier had a few places he had been known to frequent with his childer. Monroe had sent Erik Morgan and Silas hunting. Silas dropped a beautiful kindred woman at Monroe’s feet. Gabriele Fortier. A stake in her chest. Of Fortier’s six childer, the most beautiful, the greatest and first part of the spoils.

“Thank you,” said Monroe simply.

Silas looked to Azalea for approval, and she nodded. “Your share,” he said gruffly.

“I’m alright,” he said. “It is yours, tonight.”

Azalea drifted closer, her shadows more cloud than chair. “Orion,” she said, hesitating. “She is yours and your pack’s.”

Monroe was not surprised. It was an offer that meant a lot to the Hollowmen, to Azalea. It was an olive branch extended and, hidden past the disgusted look on Orion’s face, he knew it, too.

Orion looked to Monroe before he answered. “Thanks. Most Anarchs aren’t really mad into diablerie, sorry. Even enemies.”

Azalea bristled at the offense. “I will not prod you, but if none are interested in a taste, I will leave her to my boys.”

Erik Morgan spoke to Flores in a hushed rapid Spanish. Monroe knew a smattering of the language — enough to pick apart a single word. Escape.

“Which one?” he demanded. “Where did you lose them?”

Flores flinched back, anticipating the worse. Erick stepped back as Monroe advanced.

“Fiona, sir,” said Flores pathetically.

That whipping sure had an effect on the Hollowmen. Monroe wasn’t sure if he liked it, but that was a problem for the future.

“Where?” he asked again, more calmly.

“Heading north, sir.”

“Westside,” said Jack. “Do you think Fortier’s kids knew LaCroix was their broodmate?”

“I think we’re about to find out,” said Monroe tensely, turning from Flores before he did something he would regret. He killed Gabriele with a single shot. The fire made all the kinded jump. The Hollowmen did not deserve another delicacy.

“We’ll find her, sir,” burst Erik. “Ask Az. No better sneak thief in San Diego.”

“Do not interfere,” snapped Monroe. “I will deal with this. Back to Medusa. That’ll be our new base, for now. I thank you all for your help tonight.”

“No problem, captain,” said Orion. His voice hung with unsaid sentiment. 

When Jack took wings rather than join Monroe’s car, Orion looked like he wanted to join him, but he shuffled back to the Reapers. For the better. Monroe had no more patience. Not for anything.

Monroe needed to get word to Zari. He needed to get his ducks in a row in the domain. He needed to restabilize himself against potential magical attack, from those Westide Tremere. He needed to finish organizing that safehouse he found in Hollywood — the one who would keep him off the books for black tar. Monroe would not call Jan by the Ethic again. Once was shameful enough. 

In short, Monroe needed Ashley.

How?  _ How _ had Clan Toreador perfected this? Ventrue ruled. And yet every Ventrue prince had an obnoxious and ambitious Toreador on his heels that he could not operate without.

By the time Monroe found himself walking again in Medusa’s back door, he had not found any more patience. 

An office chair wheeled jerkily across tiles. Rubio stuck his head out a door as Monroe passed. “Hey, buddy. Nice to see you in one piece. Are we having a party or what?”

“I have work to do,” he said, more sharply than he wanted.

“Oh. Okay.” Rubio’s chair rolled away slowly and he retreated back in his office. Monroe stopped and turned back. Rubio’s office haven had only a cot hanging on the top third of the wall to distinguish it from any other.

“How’re you doing?” asked Rubio.

“Anaheim went well,” said Monroe heavily. “Since the Reapers heard it, too, the Hollowmen bungled getting rid of the brood. One escaped. Don’t let anyone hold it against them. I’m dealing with it.”

Rubio rotated in his chair and splayed his hands. “Do you need my help?”

“If I do, you’ll be the first to know.” Monroe leaned his forehead against the doorframe. He couldn’t slip. He was beginning to forget who knew what. “I talked to Jack, earlier tonight. Orsay and him will be around later, to ward entrances against ghouls. Speaking of, there are about thirty of Fortier’s ghouls coming in tonight. You get first pick, five, for payment. I would like you and Jack to ensure their new masters know to treat them kindly.”

Rubio’s soft smile cut like a knife. “You didn’t answer my question. Your club burned down around your ears yesterday. I get you several dozen pounds of astrolite. You set fire to Disneyworld, man.” A pained earnestness touched his eyes. “How are you?”

“Everyone keeps asking me that.” His smile was wan.

“Maybe it’s for a good reason.”

“I’ll be better when Fiona is dead,” said Monroe shortly. He would rather they think him angry, irritable, and ruthless than weak.

Perhaps Artemis Orthia was proud of him after all.

Monroe hit his speed dial as he walked. To his surprise, Ashley answered at once.

“Meet me in the back room,” said Mornoe, hanging up.

Whatever Rubio’s intentions with Medusa, it had begun to take the feel of a Camarilla elysium. The main dining room filled with licks playing cards, boomboxes competing for soundspace. The Deathsingers held an impromptu acoustic concert. Ghouls moved along, offering cold blood in cups or hot blood from their veins.

The dining room intended for kindred had been sectioned off. Quiet. Isolated. Like the rest of the restaurant, melodramatic. But Rubio had given it to Monroe, for however long the domain commandeered his space, and Monroe was in no position to turn it down. He sat at his usual table, his back against the corner.

Ashley took his sweet time, considering he was not more than twenty feet away. Maybe he was picking up gossip. Maybe he was picking his fangs. It still pissed off Monroe. Eventually, Ashley swaggered through the door separating the dining rooms and kicked it shut.

He bowed with a flourish. “You rang, Your Highness?”

The disrespectful irony made Monroe grind his fangs. He glared until Ashley sat opposite. Tension rose until Ashley kicked his feet up on the table. Monroe swept them off. A coldness fell over Ashley.

“Deal with Abrams,” ordered Monroe. “Ensure he will not move against me. We cannot afford to take risks anymore. Nines has rallied all of Downtown to his side. Once he gets a taste of battle, I can’t trust the Brujah won’t continue.

“Also. I suspect Westside is getting bolder. Their support of elder Tremere we will never be able to fully match. Regardless, I want you to leverage the Alchemists to work for you again — yes, I know E is selling to you behind my back. Use it. I can deal with disloyalty another time. If battle comes, I will need supplies — flight, telekinesis, whatever you can get. Also, prepare some manner of ritual that can produce truth — serum, talisman, whatever you can produce.

“Third, I will need twenty grams of black tar a week. Ritter will pick it up.”

“Are you finished?” asked Ashley coldly. “Because you’re starting to sound finished. You sound like you need that much heroin.”

“There are only so many hours in my night and I can’t afford to spend them fighting with the likes of you,” said Monroe. He stood and slipped off his jacket. When he rolled up his sleeve, Ashley barked a laugh.

“You’re so desperate for help, you’re going to whore yourself to me. God. It would be sad if it weren’t so pathetic.” Ashley kicked his feet back on the table.

Monroe had never felt so impotent as when Ashley smirked like that. Whatever Generation Ashley had, it precluded Dominate. Getting into a Presence match with him would be laughable. Monroe had nothing Ashley wanted. They were too deep in this together for Monroe to offer more power. He had only blood.

“You don’t have a choice here,” said Monroe softly. “I tell you what to do. You do it. End of discussion. I am not your whore. I am your dealer. Now, drink.” He hadn’t been able to keep the fragile anger from his voice.

Ashley licked his lips and tried to scoff and look away. Monroe had been careful. Only one part of the bond, now, but four tastes. The bond was so relaxing, so warm. It felt like an old friend, a deep desire of the heart, an artificial obsession that brought so much pleasure. It was impossible to resist. Each taste reinforced it, even if the weeks had passed.

There was no swagger when Ashley bit. Only desperation. His weakness felt better than the bite. Briefly, Monroe let himself enjoy the dizzying feeling, the eroticism better than feeding. Better than the black tar he owed the landlord of the safehouse. 

The pleasure would pass for him as a relaxing relief. For Ashley, it would linger. It would hide in his black shriveled heart and whisper, question, caution him.

When Ashley’s fangs slipped wetly from Monroe’s wrist, his head lingered, leaning a chiseled cheekbone into the curve of his hand. He looked up, eyes glassy and lost.

It would be sad if it weren’t so pathetic.

Monroe smirked and gave the smallest mercy of touch. His victory was short-lived. An ice cube slid along his spine as he remembered another blood bond, another regent, another bondslave. How Prince Garlotte of Baltimore had always stroked Monroe’s hair after feeding. How wonderful it had felt, all the while a lone and forgotten voice screamed in the back of his mind—

Monroe stood, unable to look at Ashley again. “Get to it,” he said brusquely.

“Yes, Your Highness,” said Ashley, still dazed.

There was no sarcasm and some unnamed emotion flushed through Monroe.

“And, Ashley,” added Monroe after him. “If you know what is good for you, you won’t call me that again.”

It took Ashley a moment to process, but he found his smile again. “Call you what?”

The doors slid open and closed and took his offending presence away. Monroe waited a minute for Ashley to disappear among the masses, or out the door, likely as not. Then, he followed and searched for Lloyd. The Brujah was a chameleon. The best of the clan always were: Hellenes, the spiritual successor to Brujah Athens, who dominated Camarilla social salons with philosophy, and the Anarchs, boorish ruffians with more leather jackets than sense. Lloyd had been Monroe’s first Rubio, an uncanny master.

“Fiona Fortier,” repeated Lloyd once Monroe brought him in the back dining room. “Anything else?”

“Ventrue,” said Monroe. He strained his memory of the woman he spotted at Fortier’s manor. “Short blonde hair, curvy build, nasal voice. Might be coming off her sire’s blood bond. Her broodmate’s the Westside Prince. I have eyes over there. Use Ashley to access them. Don’t go in there—”

“I can handle myself, man,” said Lloyd, clapping Monroe on the arm and looking like the absolute last person to enter a Camarilla court.

“I know you can,” said Monroe, relieved. “I want her head, or brought to me, staked, as soon as possible.”

“Roger that, cap’n.”

“And, Lloyd, keep this under wraps,” he warned. “Ashley will need to know, but don’t go shooting your mouth off to the Deathsingers or whatever piece of tail you’re chasing next.”

Lloyd shrugged like he couldn’t help it. “I’ll do my best.” 

He flickered a smile and finished what Monroe said in tandem, “Do better.” 

Lloyd nodded. “I will.”

“Good man,” said Monroe tiredly, submitting to the obligatory high-five before Lloyd would leave him alone.

Obfuscate let him slip out the door unnoticed. Monroe wondered if he could petition the sun for additional night hours. Even in the dead of winter, there was never enough time.

Monroe walked to the destination alone. Ritter’s job had him working around the clock and, while he could ghoul anew, his blood’s efforts were best directed to Ritter. Though Dawson was best and only suitable for guarding and driving, he needed finessing to understand his new place. It wasn’t easy. Monroe had only brought one ghoul into the night. He died, decades ago, and still left a bad taste in his mouth.

At a desolate corner in Los Feliz, an expensive black car barely slid to a stop before the distant Dutchman threw open the door and Monroe stepped inside.

“You made the late night news,” said Jan. “Baas.”

The driver turned the volume on the radio up. The talk radio newscaster continued on, about a terror attack at Disneyland that had left miraculously no one dead. The blaze cost millions in damages. No suspects yet.

“Louis Fortier is dead,” said Monroe. “I am working on his estates.”

“And who lets you do that?” asked Jan bitterly.

Monroe raised an eyebrow. “Pardon? No one  _ lets _ me. I made the decision, a difficult one that had to be made, weighed the advantages and fallouts, and I executed the plan. There is no higher authority that I answer to—”

“Oh?” he asked with a tiny smile that might’ve been a smirk. “No prince? No archon?”

Monroe absolved himself in the silence. “I misspoke—”

“You did not. You spoke as you believe. Coarsely, perhaps, in anger, but truth.”

“You want me to stop,” said Monroe, swallowing. The humility from being in Jan’s presence curdled in his chest.

Jan shook his head. “My words won’t truly matter to you if you do not understand them. I won’t stop you.  _ You  _ will. You will cross a line you never knew you had and you will have one final chance, to bury your conscience or face it.”

Monroe held himself back, but only barely. Jan was not the all-knowing devil he presented himself as. He was fallible, prone to weakness like any other. He did not understand this city, how things were done when the kindred were Anarch, what it meant to have loyalty.

Monroe was not an insolent child. He refused to be treated like one, but, of course, he could not truly refuse. He was not the highest power. Not in this car.

“Thank you, sir, for your words of advice,” he said politely. “I will consider them.”

Jan tapped the roof, his lip curling faintly. “I’m assuming you want to return to your house, tonight. Be with your childe.”

Monroe tensed at the mention of Hawthorne. “That would be kind, sir, thank you.”

“Entering our world, even and perhaps especially from a position of servitude, it is a fledgling’s sire who highlights the faucets of conflict and life,” said Jan distantly.

Monroe did not take kindly to the idea he was an insufficient sire. “Whatever you want to say, sir, please say it.”

“Your childe will learn from you and you cannot choose what she learns,” said Jan. “Moreover, once she begins her tour of the agoge, I will have her the longest, for months or years, and I do not wish to spend it all unteaching your inadvertent lessons.”

“There is nothing about Miss Hawthorne that you need to fix,” said Monroe through gritted teeth.

“Perhaps. I won’t know until you sunder her to me.”

Monroe knew it would come and sooner than he wanted. Once, there would have been no one he trusted more with Hawthorne than Jan. Now, he was not so sure.

Jan dropped him off at his house and departed without another word. Still unsettled, Monroe did his best to subsume his anger. It had been getting the better of him of late. There was no point bringing it home.

“It’s Monroe,” he called as he entered, more for Hawthorne’s benefit than Ritter’s. 

Ritter still high-tailed it out of Monroe’s office, looking like he hadn’t slept in days. He extended a hand for Monroe’s coat, which he gave unwillingly. He had learned it better not to argue with Ritter about these things. Ghouls needed to feel helpful.

“Get some sleep, Anton,” said Monroe with a sigh.

Ritter’s smile and eye twitched a little. “When I can, sir.”

“I gave you an order. What is stopping you from completing it?”

“Mr Dawson—”

Monroe understood at once. “Then give the man a tranquilizer, chain him in the basement. I can’t have you die from lack of sleep. Take eight hours and refresh yourself.”

“Thank you,” said Ritter empathetically. A lesser man might’ve cried. “ _ Thank you, _ sir.”

Monroe patted Ritter on the shoulder. “Take my bed.” 

New ghouls brought behind the Masquerade should’ve spent their time suckling on their master like a newborn piglet. The dependency on the bond became a foundation of ghoul psyche. It also cut down on the catatonic terrified weeping. But Monroe had no time for that.

He found Hawthorne in her bedroom, reclined in bed and listening to a record. Seventies. New York Dolls. Signed. One of her favourites. 

Lazily, she rolled over and lowered the volume. “How did Operation Kill Mickey Mouse go?”

“Well, all things considered. One of his childer got away.” Monroe glanced down the hall. “I want you to take care of Dawson. He’s yours. You’ll take him with you when you begin your tour with Jan.”

Hawthorne chuckled low and sat up. “We’ll get back to Dawson later — because that is  _ not _ happening. Fortier’s childe?”

“Fiona,” he said regretfully. “I have Lloyd on it. Between him, Ashley, and Zari, I expect we’ll have her in a month.”

Monroe sat on the bed next to her. He was proud of her. There was nothing in Hawthorne’s voice or face that betrayed her own anger — only the way she gripped his hands, nails digging half-moons into his flesh.

“Let me have her,” she said. “I couldn’t come with you, but I can do this. Make an exhibition of her at Medusa, or a newly-rebuilt Blue Moon.”

“I won’t set that precedent for the domain, though I do appreciate having my very own Lady MacBeth.” He landed a kiss against her lips. She pressed them back with her words.

“You don’t need one.”

It was not an accusation, as he had felt from Jan, or any of Monroe’s second or third thoughts over his latest decisions. It was an acceptance, an understanding of the evil that sometimes needed to happen, that moments of darkness lived between the light. Ghouls knew it as well as kindred. As Hawthorne was no ghoul. Not anymore.

Her hand slid up his chest to his shoulder, knotting in the fabric and dragging his lips back to where they belonged. She pulled him deeper into the bed. When she began to undress him, he tensed, thankful she couldn’t see his face. Even so, she must’ve felt his awkwardness. He had not been half as frightened when Blue burned around him. It must’ve been seventy years. Eighty. 

And he had no reference for whatever this was. This partnership, the intimate relation of sire and childe, tender and painful and bloodsoaked. 

Still, she gripped him with an urgent need — and she needed an answer. And it would always be yes. When they had finished, she settled against his chest, her hands still carving new roads against his skin. Without warning, it came, one after another.

“I love you.” She whispered it against his lips, pressed against his skin. I love you. It stole his voice as her body moved deeper into his arms. I love you.

It was not forgiveness. Nothing so common. It was a choice to move past how he had cursed her. Not out of desperation, or manipulation, or power, or anything Clan Ventrue had ever prepared him for. I love you.

Almond and cherry. His blood in her veins. It sang to him across their wasted years. I love you. It washed over him and took his sins and the darkness of the night with it. Fanged lips whispered again. I love you. Sharp, the words burrowed into him and made a home in a place he had long thought barren and dead.

“I love you, too,” he said.

“I didn’t mean to love you so much,” she murmured.

“I did.”


	34. Boring

The next time Zari saw Mercurio, she promised she would never call him boring again. He was romantic, selfless, and exceptionally hot-blooded. She found herself falling into a fantasy of his arms, the wiry strength, the way the veins turned over his forearms, the coarse dusky hair. The way every patch of him flushed, growing hotter and redder. She hated how mortals sweated and panted, invading her space with their presence — why couldn’t they just get on with it? But Mercurio was different. She hated he was different.

Owaine’s fuzzy eyebrows narrowed, almost imperceptibly. He had stopped talking. Shit.

“Incredibly valorant,” said Zari. She was here to smile dazzlingly and waste her ravishing beauty on a particularly ugly and dense Ventrue. Listening had not been part of her and LaCroix’s agreement. She reached a hand to touch Owaine’s and batted her eyelashes. “Please. Keep telling me about the work you did for Queen Anne in the Scottish Revolts. It sounds _fascinating_.”

Even the English accent couldn’t do anything for her. 

And, so, Zari drifted. She hoped it wouldn’t come to having to fuck him. That would be pretty sad.

When the prince had asked for a private meeting, before elysium, at his tower, she couldn’t deny that it scared her. Therese had been there, too, in the golden penthouse office. Things had iced between the two of them. Zari could sniff an argument a mile away. Occupational hazard of living with Ashley.

Therese stalked out, sparing Zari a confidential smile before departing.

LaCroix looked more worn and less aloof than normal. “Sit.”

She sat. So did he.

“How are you tonight, Your Highness?” she asked politely.

His eyes flicked up to her, cold as ever and she wondered if the tiredness was only a misunderstanding. “I understand you are attempting harmless conversation, but one does not speak to the prince without being first addressed.”

Zari knew better than to argue with him when he was in this mood of adjusting decorum. Meticulously, LaCroix straightened a line of custom pens, the points lined like spears. “Miss Jeanette tells me you helped her and Therese settle a… disagreement betwixt them. She said you arrived whilst they argued.”

“I did,” she said cautiously.

“You know, then, the nature of the sisters,” he said. “What are your thoughts?”

Zari struggled to keep her face composed. Her thoughts. LaCroix was not interested in her thoughts. Therese had surely told him that Zari was to be trusted, completely. He needed to know it. “The Malkavian curse has left its mark,” she said. “Therese remains a sharp-minded and empathetic woman. Jeanette, while a friend, has no relation to my nightly business.”

LaCroix seemed to relax. He straightened his stationary again. “Yes. Both of the women have much to say about you. Though I admit to not take Miss Jeanette’s advice to heart, Therese’s endorsement has held water in the past, so to speak. She believes you could accomplish the task more reliably than her sister — though they rarely see eye-to-eye on matters I suggest.”

“What task?” she asked slowly.

It wasn’t worth it. _Nothing_ could be worth putting up with yet another Ventrue of a century-plus who thought he shitted gold and everyone wanted to polish it. Even worse, Zari had played it too subtle with LaCroix and they hadn’t agreed on a reward. Stupid. 

How hard was it for a Toreador to suffer in silence on several boring dates?

Chester Owaine was another new arrival, but had latched himself to Strauss. Discreetly, of course, but easy to see if you were looking. Debts, clandestine meetings between their ghouls, contacts in the Old World. Whatever they were planning, it was LaCroix’s problem. Which made it her problem.

 _When_ had she started to think of the prince like that? Was it possible to be bonded through his ghoul? No. Of course not. Good thing, too. Mercurio had wonderfully thick, sultry blood that made Zari’s knees weak just thinking about it.

“I am not a fool,” LaCroix had said after her as she left. “I know you have been distracting my ghoul of late. So long as it does not interfere with his duties, nor yours, I am inclined to allow it to continue.”

“Should I have asked your permission?” she asked, with a touch too much attitude for LaCroix’s taste.

His eyes flashed. “Yes. You should have. You are dismissed, Miss Herald.”

This had been her third date with Chester Owaine. He was no more appealing or interesting, but was so painfully simple it hurt. He wasn’t enamored with Zari. Most of their time together, Zari felt like a piece of real estate he was appraising. He checked her pedigree with Darsh Amble — _that_ , too, had been an interesting conversation — to ensure her lineage didn’t outshine his own, but not so common to be beneath him. He seemed to think he was doing her a favour by getting his ghoul to buy her flowers — red roses, of course — and spending hours enthralling a poor pitiful Anarch with his exploits in Camarilla London. 

What a charmer.

Zari, of course, entertained these delusions. Sometimes, she thought she laid it on too thick, but Owaine ate it up. She dared not risk Presence, but he seemed susceptible enough to feminine wiles.

She couldn’t wait to get home to Mercurio and forget Owaine dared look at her. Every moment was exhausting. His thrilling tales didn’t expose anything that could help destroy him. Zari doubted most were true.

And, then, the smallest kernel of gold in a mountainous shit pile.

“I suppose you are too young to have sired,” he sniffed in that snotty accent, “but they are tremendously useful! Young childer, they need a strong hand to wield the switch, but — delightful creatures. The Embrace is the most valuable tool in a kindred’s arsenal.”

“Things in LA,” she said encouragingly. “Well. They’re pretty lax. With all the comings and goings as the realm settles, I’m sure the prince wouldn’t mind such a powerful clanmate and ally doing it. His Highness is… not so direct with his praise, but I know he thinks highly of you.”

“Of course, he does,” said Owaine, but there was no earnesty to it. He chortled. “Ah, LaCroix. One of those Caitiff-Ventrue, those blue bloods who fall so far from the clan we all wonder if they can find their ways home. Ah.” He lifted his cup. “Blood will out.” He had a sudden worried look. “No offence, my dear. Your own blood, it is regrettable, but—”

“I’ve adjusted,” said Zari with a cutting smile that glanced off him. If she had to endure one more backhanded compliment, she was likely to give him a backhand herself. “Tell me more about your time on the Indian subcontinent. It sounds like an adventure.”

And, off he went again.

Zari knew she could do it. Poke and prod until Owaine would Embrace a new childe. Maybe get him drunk enough. She had to see Ashley again tonight. He could get word back to Rubio for her. That would be an adventure, all right.

Then, LaCroix could kill him freely. Strauss would lose whatever Ventrue pawn he had found. One point for the prince. How many points Strauss had, how many they needed to win, or even the game itself were completely beside the point. But it was a game Zari understood.

Owaine stood up suddenly, with great apologies. “My sweet Black rose, I must depart early. I am a busy man, with many great responsibilities and a business empire to run, I’m afraid. You have been wonderful company for an old blue blood such as myself.”

“Oh, no,” she said, pouting. Every word set off her bullshit detectors. “Wouldn’t you rather spend the rest of the night with me?”

He chuckled. “Oh, of course, but I really must depart.”

She stood as well, following. “Can you at least drop me off?” she said, linking arms with him. “Since you are already cutting our time short, Mr Owaine, I think it is only fair you grant me the additional ten minutes.”

He blustered and blowed, but ceded. As they left, Zari found her cell phone and slid out the keyboard to send a fast text to Mercurio. _Coming home early. Follow his car_. When Owaine’s ghoul arrived, she added his licence plate. 

Mercurio’s _Will do_ came fast. Even those two words thrilled her more than Owaine had all night.

Owaine was not one to change tactics. On he droned, about the wild and fantastical beasts of the Indian subcontinent, sounding dreadfully like a penny novel from the eighteen hundreds. On and on and on, just like the grey skies and grey rains. Zari couldn’t ever remember having such horrible weather. Maybe he imported it.

Zari took his hand. Since their first time, she had taken to wearing gloves. The touch of his skin made hers crawl. “Mr Owaine, thank you for your time tonight,” she said sweetly. “It has been most inspiring to talk to a man like you.”

She let him kiss her gloves and she stepped out, blinking with Celerity to enter the building. She lingered in the entryway for a moment, watching. The rain hadn’t had the chance to wet her hair, but she didn’t know if she could do it again. Owaine’s car pulled away and, seconds later, Mercurio’s pulled around the corner and idled for her.

Celerity took her to the door and she pulled — but it was locked. Groaning, Zari hammered on the window. Mercurio cursed inside, but it was too late. Her curls had sodden. They would get frizzy and ginormous without remedy. Car chase took priority.

“Sorry,” said Mercurio meekly.

Zari murmured and fished for a scrunchie she had stocked for such a time. Her hair might need it.

“You look nice,” he said with a smile, starting to follow them.

Zari kissed him and ripped off her gloves. “Would you believe Owaine didn’t say that, once?”

“Oh. Maybe I should say it again.”

She bit back the giggle that threatened her lips. “Just follow the car, Romeo.”

“Relax,” said Mercurio. “You think this is my first tail? What’s he doing anyway?”

“Supposedly going home to work,” she said darkly. “But I don’t believe it. Something to do with Strauss, I’m sure. Maybe a ghoul.”

Mercurio slipped one hand from the steering wheel to her lap to grip her knee. “Don’t worry,” he drawled. “We’ll figure it out.”

Zari took his hand in hers. She liked how it looked, how it felt. He had strong coarse hands, common. “You’re not boring, by the way,” she said quietly.

He laughed. “What? Am I being compared to… _that_ sad excuse for blood?”

“No,” she said wryly. “I just… wanted you to know that I don’t think you’re boring. New York must’ve been rough on you, in the mob, and I’m sure this carefree honest thing doesn’t come natural. It’s work. Not easy work either.”

They followed Owaine at a distance, always a turn or block behind, as he navigated through Santa Monica. The chic downtown passed by for more urban apartment blocks and, then, further north.

“No one’s noticed that,” said Mercurio at last. “I try to not let my past bother me. But, you’re right. It’s a lotta hard work and, when every night is more of the same, I wonder sometimes if it’s worth it.”

Zari had nothing more to say, so she just stroked his hand. His thumb had been broken, like his nose, and the joint left crooked. He wore a couple of gold rings, just bands. The heat of it warmed her hands.

“The prince knows,” she said.

He grimaced. “I know.”

“He said we can continue, so long as it doesn’t disturb our own duties.”

“Meaning I can’t ever put you above him,” said Mercurio bitterly.

“I can’t either,” she said, confused.

He took a deep breath. “You won’t be told to. To him, you’re… playing fetch with his dog on the weekends. But sometimes, he needs his dog to stop chewing a bone and go… hunting.”

Zari thought again of her own ghouls, the ones she had thrown away or killed accidentally. She couldn’t remember their names. How many Mercurios she might’ve had, and she realised there was no other Mercurio. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s my life.” He shrugged and squeezed her hand. “It’s going a lot better now than it has in a while.”

A smile wormed onto her face. She happened to glance up from their linked hands through the windshield. “He’s going into the hills.”

Mercurio took a deep breath. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Technically, the hills were Monroe’s domain — Switzerland or Blue Barony or whatever bullshit they came up with next — and Ashley had been working them over since he lost Hollywood. Did Strauss collaborate with Mornoe? Old Camarilla ties? Was it just that Owaine found an old clanmate in Monroe?

A couple of mansions threw parties. Even a mile away, the lights and sound traveled through the hills. When Owaine’s car stopped suddenly, Mercurio casually pulled into a drive some paces behind. The driver stepped from the car and deposited something in the bushes before speeding away.

“How long do we wait before checking it out?” she asked in a whisper.

Mercurio hummed the _Jeopardy_ theme tune. “About that long. The person coming for it could be by any minute. No, no, no,” he added as she reached for the door. “If they see me, I’m just Owaine’s ghoul. Stay here.”

Reluctantly, Zari settled back and grumbled. He was back a moment later.

“Well. It’s a magic pen.”

She raised an eyebrow. “A magic pen?”

“Yep.”

“A pen that…”

“Is magic, yes.”

Zari laughed at the serious look on his face. “Come on, what is it really?”

Mercurio didn’t laugh. “It’s definitely magic. It’s got a thick nasty aura. And it’s a pen, in a nice velvet case. The sorta thing I’d get the big man for Embrace night. Not cheap.”

Was Strauss collaborating with _Monroe_? Trading pens? She knew Monroe couldn’t be as stupid as he looked sometimes, but… He would know Strauss would just be using him. He wouldn’t do that. Would he? No. He was much too full of himself to be an elder’s tool like that.

“Does it mean something to you?” asked Mercurio.

Zari took his hand again, worrying the nails with her own. “No. I… I’m just getting tired of scheming and subterfuge. It’s all very boring.”

“I’m sorry, babe. Is there anything I can do?”

She had been about to joke about ditching LaCroix and LA and moving out to the country, when she remembered what he had said before. They were just going to have to make the best of it, as long as they could. When Mercurio drew a line with his finger down her face, she almost broke.

Instead she smiled. “Maybe a kiss.”

He beamed. “I can do that.”

And he did, well. It felt better than Zari had remembered and she let herself sink into it. He cupped her face and kissed her deeper. It shivered in her fangs.

A pass of headlights flooded the inside of the car before sliding by. Mercurio pulled back from her, eyes sharp. The car parked, shut off, and someone stepped out. The new arrival wasn’t anyone Zari recognised. Definitely not any of Monroe’s guys, not even that sketchy Danish one. 

“Ghoul or kindred?” asked Mercurio urgently.

Zari took another look, straining her eyes until she could distinguish the knit on his wool coat, the plaid of his tie. And the slight pulse of breath. “Ghoul, or human.”

Mercurio nodded his thanks and stepped out. He announced their presence with a silenced bullet. _Whizz_. The arrival went down with a shriek of agony.

Zari slammed her door and followed. Idiot. “What are you thinking, Rambo?” she snapped. “He’s—”

“Alone,” said Mercurio casually. “No ghoul would leave their master in an off car. Where do you think you’re going?” he called.

The ghoul glistened with sweat and fear. “N-N0where, sir.”

“Camarilla,” said Zari at once. Her lip curled at the gun. “There’s no need for such gore. Presence gets answers just as fast. Leaves fewer bloodstains, too.”

Mercurio crouched down and pressed the barrel of the gun to the other kneecap. The first leg was a twisted mess. He dug his fingers into the gory mess for a moment, to whimpers of pain, and dug out fragments of bullet. “This how it’s gonna work,” he started. “Heal up that first one. And then you’re gonna say who you’re picking this up—”

“Victoria Ash,” the ghoul spluttered. “Please. Please don’t kill me.”

Mercurio glanced to Zari with a raised eyebrow. “New ghoul.”

“She trusts Owaine, to not have it go south,” she summarized. “Who’s Victoria Ash?”

“Seneschal,” said the ghoul, gasping. “Vaughn’s seneschal.”

“Valley Prince.”

This was so much worse than Zari could’ve thought. It wasn’t just inter-domain anymore. Strauss didn’t want LaCroix’s crown or to rule him discreetly. He conspired with the rival prince, offering magic artifacts to the seneschal. What if they were planning to get rid of their respective princes, rule together? What ifs, what ifs. The temporary oasis of peace and power Zari had found crumbled out from under her.

Mercurio grabbed the ghoul’s attention. The mess of the leg had begun to heal, but there were memories to mend. They had never been here. When they got back to the car and left the ghoul to carry out his assigned task, the roads back down into Los Angeles spun by.

Mercurio sighed and said though thin lips, “I don’t like Presence. Not trying to rag on Toreadors. I get, that’s your clan’s schtick. Dominate’s Ventrue’s. But… it might leave fewer bloodstains, but, in my experience, the wounds are a lot deeper. No offence.”

She blinked. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand. It was that she did. She didn’t like the mirror and how he would’ve seen her, had he known her properly.

“Maybe I’ll tell you about Ashley one night,” she said quietly, “but, tonight, I gotta meet up with him in Hollywood.”

Mercurio didn’t even question it. He just changed course and delivered her into the middle of his master’s enemy territory. Traffic moved slow down Sunset. Mercurio pulled curbside at Pandemonium and Zari had a bizarre impulse to take him with her — like a wet blanket, a comforting vein to suckle on like a baby and its binky. But, after his talk on Presence, she didn’t want him to see her around Ashley. She gave Mercurio a kiss before running out.

Pandemonium felt more claustrophobic than normal. Half the clientele were familiar faces and knew her, an associate of their favourite dealer, or former vessels. They bore the wounds of her Presence. And they adored her. It sickened her how much she loved that dopey dazed look.

She found Ashley on the second floor, as normal. He didn’t have any playtoy and sat alone, at a booth with a surly look in his eye. Something had stolen his zeal and zest.

“Evening,” he said stiffly. “How are you?” He seemed to see her again for the first time. “What’s happened?” He reached a hand to enclose her fingers. Sharp black nails traced familiar lines in her palm.

Zari tried to smile again, throw a banal line with a toss of her curls. But her curls were wet and, as it always had been, it was so hard to lie to Ashley. “Nothing good,” she whispered. “I… I have to cooperate with the prince, right, to stay on his good side? He’s had me entertain this Ventrue who’s aligning with this hot-shot Tremere wizard, but it turns out that the Tremere and the Valley seneschal have agreement. But I don’t know what it was. With all this _shit_ going on, I thought, somehow, stupidly, that this would all bypass Westside. That the worst would be wearing last season’s cocktail dress at elysium. Also.” 

Zari groaned and trapped her mouth shut, fanning away Ashley’s hand, but he didn’t let go. He tuttered and pulled her closer towards him. With a feather touch, he brushed aside a wet limp curl from her face. Noting the scrunchie, he pulled it from her wrist. It had been years since Zari had let him touch her hair, as much as he liked it. There was a calming intimacy in it. He pulled her hair back into the scrunchie and adjusted the fall until he was satisfied.

“Tell me,” he said, so softly it could’ve been mistaken for empathy.

Zari shook her head. “Like you care.”

“I’ve had a rough, rough week, but this is a lot more than a week, my childe.”

Zari blinked and a cold red-tinged tear slid down her face. “Jeanette tried to kill me. Jeanette also tried to kill Therese. And Therese tried to kill Jeanette, for trying to kill me. But, thing is, they’re the same person. Two personalities. I don’t know if they were _ever_ sisters… or Malkavian curse…. or... I pulled the gun out of… someone’s hands and… they trust me. Jeanette’s fucking LaCroix. Therese loves him.”

Ashley snickered. “Alright. Trying to wash that image out of my brain, but I’m sorry. Should I kill one — or both?”

She had to laugh. “No. Therese loves me so much she wants to be _The Fifth Estate’s_ editor when LaCroix wants it up again for March. So long as Therese trusts me, the prince will.”

“Lovely.”

“And… I’ve been fanging the prince’s ghoul. Mercurio. He’s…”

“Ventrue blood. It’ll get you.” And Ashley nodded like he understood, like he understood anything about what made Mercurio so appealing.

“My son’s dying,” she said, and she couldn’t raise her voice above a whisper. Pandemonium was the last place she wanted to talk about this, but if not here, where? If not now, when? So long as Aisha stayed with the Swans, Ashley should know. And Zari needed to lift the weight on her shoulders, if only for sympathy. “Aisha’s brother. He’s got cancer, bad. He won’t have any long left, but…”

“Don’t ghoul him out of grief,” said Ashley gently. “And don’t Embrace him, either. Love him, remember him, but don’t visit.”

Zari glared. The tears dried in her eyes. “End of life—”

“Exactly,” he said. “It won’t give you any closure you think you need. It’ll just hurt him, if he understands what’s happened to his sister and mother. But, he won’t, so he’ll just be confused. Maybe angry. Dying humans are a whole other beast.”

“Don’t talk about Noel like that,” snapped Zari. She wiped her tears hurriedly. “He’s—”

“Enough.” Ashley raised a finger. “I’m sorry you’re hurting from this, but I’ve said my piece.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Zari drummed her nails against the cold glass of the table. It couldn’t have been more than three weeks, but from the deepest depths of her soul she wanted Mercurio. She wished she had told him. But, of course, Zari came here to talk about the prince to his enemies. Who knew how the bond would react?

Ashley sighed. “Zari. I don’t want you to think I don’t care. I do. But the past died with your heartbeat. It had to. Either the slow, agonizing, drawn-out death of watching, loving, waiting, or the quick rip of turning your back. Turn it, and keep it turned. I know I seem harsh—”

“You had a rough week,” said Zari coarsely. She knew where he was going and she didn’t want to hear the end.

Ashley traced the stitching on the shoulder of her dress. “Yes,” he said at last. “Very busy. Very messy. Not the way I like working. Monroe’s… starting to unravel.”

“What? Why?” She turned back. “Stress?”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s just Monroe, but more of him. More paranoid. More arrogant. More bitchy. Still don’t think he knows he ain’t bonding me. Boy’s got a temper.” He smirked. “Burned down Disneyland and strung up Mickey Mouse because Fortier tried to kill him.”

Zari had heard of it, of course. Since Garcia had summoned the old guard to wipe out a rebellion in East LA in the nineties, it had been the worse gang warfare the Anarchs had seen. “And Charlie? Jack?” she asked, fighting to keep her voice level.

“Fine.” He shrugged. “Fortier almost killed Charlie in that Blue Moon bomb.”

“Good for Monroe, then.”

Ashley leaned on an arm and winced. “I… actually got sent by him. They lost one of Fortier’s childe-wife-daughters — Fiona. She might come back to LaCroix. Keep an eye out for a very singed Ventrue.”

“Why would she come to Westside?” asked Zari. “If she has a braincell, she got on a plane to Seattle.”

“Most people don’t have braincells,” he said, pleased. “But, LaCroix was Fortier’s first runaway childe. The two, according to Monroe, were working together. If the other kids knew, she might go looking for her brother.”

It left an unpleasant taste in Zari’s mouth. LaCroix, being a childe of Fortier. No tears would be shed across LA for the baron, but it tainted the prince. Then again, he might be an elitist asshole, but he wasn’t the same racist and sexist Fortier had been.

“LaCroix will need all the help he can get,” said Zari ambivalently. “Between whatever Strauss and Victoria Ash are cooking—”

“ _What_?” snapped Ashley. “You said it was Vaughn’s seneschal.”

She blinked, startled by the venom. “She _is_ Vaughn’s seneschal, at least that’s what her ghoul said with a bullet in him.”

She had never seen Ashley like this. It was like a light had gone out of him, every inch dark and tense. His jaw worked, fangs grinding against his front teeth. The dim blue light of the club flashed along him. 

“You feeling okay?” she asked. “What’s up with Vic—”

“Don’t say her name.”

But it wasn’t a command. The strength had drained from his voice. He tossed his sunglasses aside and rubbed his eyes. Lost, Zari put a hand on his back. As soon as she touched him, he recovered. The sunglasses went back on, the stiffness left, and he sprawled in the booth next to Zari with a blinding smile.

“Wanna stay a while?” he asked. “I got work.”

“What kind?”

Ashley traced the outline of her face. “Just the Sons. Fortier must’ve had problems with me, too — or it’s Fiona. Not just Blue, but the theatre in Feliz, the Winchester bar—”

“You’re sitting on a lot of money and nowhere to launder,” said Zari sweetly.

He snorted. “Pandemonium’s still standing. Monroe’s busy — and a bitch — so he’s sending Hawthorne at some point.”

“You wanna meet a blind girl in a crowded noisy nightclub?” asked Zari, scoffing.

Ashley smiled. “It’s not noisy up here.”

“Taking your shit with Monroe out on his childe. How do you think that’s gonna work out for you?”

He shrugged. “With style.”

When Zari spotted Hawthorne, she could barely believe it. Monroe had sent her with that European ghoul who he claimed had been one of his childer’s. Even worse. Supposedly, the childe had arrived in LA earlier — a childe Monroe claimed wanted to climb the Camarilla.

Hawthorne didn’t look a whole lot different. Maybe a bit paler, greyer, but with that perpetually pissed off expression, and layers of black that, in the dim light, condensed into a box that swallowed her from the neck down. As she sat on Ashley’s other side, the ghoul stepped away discreetly. 

“Hello,” said Ashley experimentally. “In interest of full disclosure, Zari’s here. I’m sure you remember Zari.”

“I do,” said Hawthorne evenly.

Zari’s eyes continued to follow the ghoul. Like Hawthorne used to, he kept his distance in formalwear. Not a hair out of place. “How’s Grimes getting along without his ghoul?” she asked.

Hawthorne’s brief pause said everything Zari needed to know. “Adapting.” She interlocked her fingers and leaned on the table. “It has come to our attention—”

Ashley laughed. “‘Our’? Is that the royal ‘we’ now?”

“Say what you want, Swan. You know it includes you.”

“Never,” he drawled, but there was a bitterness there Zari hadn’t heard in a long time. “You and I, we’re just different dogs on the same leash.”

Hawthorne ignored him. “We all have our jobs. You do yours well. So do I. It is unfortunate when our paths need to cross, but needs must. Monroe wants to ensure you are satisfied with your arrangement with him.”

“Interesting choice of word,” said Ashley. “You know, I could say a lot of things, but I never come away from our encounters _satisfied_.”

“Do you require avenues to launder money?” she asked in a fair approximation of Monroe’s constant irritability.

He shrugged like it couldn't mean less to him, then said, “Yes.”

“For the last two centuries and change,” she said, “I have managed finances for Clan Ventrue. Even with only three years, I know the layout of this city better than most. And Blue Moon will require lengthy repair work. I could stretch the paperwork out for years. Things fall through cracks. I am not here to renegotiate your terms with Monroe over Blue Moon’s operations. I am here to strike anew.”

Ashley’s fingers played over the stitching in the booth as he sobered himself. “Monroe didn’t send you,” he said in a much different voice.

Hawthorne had never smiled much before, even less than Monroe, but her mouth twitched. “I saw an opportunity to protect his investment and I moved. I do my job well. I manage his finances, his sire’s before him. There is no amount you could give me that I could not handle.”

“I know you’re competent. What’s your price, then?”

“Five percent,” she said crisply. “Standard fee. I also seek sustenance — cold and hot and unlimited in quantity — by a very specific requirement.”

“Done,” he said instantly. “Want to shake on it? Seal in blood? Haven’t tried yours yet, doll.”

Hawthorne stood and the ghoul sprung back to life like an animatronic. “And you won’t, but don’t flatter yourself,” she said haughtily. “It is not out of respect that I keep my vitae out of you. It is a revulsion to the idea of your lips touching my skin. Good evening. And, good evening, Zari. I’ll pass along your regards.”

Zari muttered a farewell, but she couldn’t help but notice the way Ashley licked his fangs as she left. “Why can’t you just keep your fangs out of Ventrue?” she said, sighing.

“You can’t either,” he said with a grin.

“Only the ghoul.”

“Precisely. I tried her once before, when Monroe first came.”

Zari smirked. “Is that why she’s so cold?”

“No,” he said regretfully. “ _That’s_ a result of Monroe’s blood. What was that you asked her ghoul?”

She would rather forget. “Monroe told me he belonged to an old childe of his — Zachary Grimes, who wanted to advance in the Camarilla and his link to Monroe was suspicious. Do you talk to Grimes? Is he…” Zari didn’t even know what she could ask.

Ashley stood and offered her a hand. It slid easily, comfortably into his. “He lied to you.”

“I’m starting to see that, yeah,” she said quietly.

“I’ll take care of him,” he promised. “For now, I told De Luca I’d meet with Tijuana for him, since getting them on their shitlist is mainly my fault.”

Zari bit her lip. She should leave. He had a grip on her, but it wasn’t strong, only a suggestion. She could just stand back, tell him. But, when Ashley looked at her like that, with that smile, she felt like a fledgling again.

It was all so familiar. When the blood and parties lost their shine and Zari wanted purpose, she poked. Ashley let her, excitedly introducing her around. It had been De Luca’s father, then. The lose band of families — spouses and children smoking and playing, while the members talked business — made her miss it all. The cartels, the Presence, the smell of money, the broken Italian of _our thing_. It was all so melodramatic, so cinema, but when a shoot-out with the cops had very low risk of mortality, criminal lifestyles didn’t have the same danger. In fact, they became practical.

So, Zari didn’t argue. She let Ashley lead her into his car and drive them to the edge of Los Feliz, a dusty and deserted back lot that hadn’t seen legal action in some time.

“What’d you do to get De Luca on the cartel’s shitlist?” she asked.

Ashley sniffed. “Mornoe’s been giving me a to-do list a mile long. Enchantments, political moves, allies — goosechase, bullshit, bullshit. I haven’t been moving what I’m supposed to, especially since Blue shut down.”

Why was it always the same? Who had done it first? The Ventrue or the human? Zari hadn’t been around in a while, but she knew the representative the Tijuana cartel sent by the clean-cut hair and ice black suit. The others, they were just muscle. Maybe humans thought they were intimidating. Zari was a lot more scared of a hundred pound scrawny Brujah than any human bodybuilder.

Zari tracked the reactions that passed the humans as they took in Ashley. Disgust. Confusion. Then, when he spoke Spanish to them, a slowly simmering anger. She knew he fed on it. The conversation drifted, harshened, traded back and forth like a tennis match. Zari didn’t speak a word of Spanish. But she knew people. And these people were pissed off. Ashley sure as hell wasn’t telling them the drugs were on pause due to a secret vampire war. He didn’t have any answer they’d like.

Ashley crunched across the gravel again and put an arm around Zari. Somewhere between Auspex and instinct, she felt it when he walked. Presence. He egged them on. And, with that charming smile he gave her, bringing her here had been his way of consoling her — and himself — after their rough weeks.

“I’m sorry, but my dear friend doesn’t speak Spanish,” said Ashley. “Senjor Sandero, would you mind?”

The man in the suit snickered, but contained himself. “Of course. Of course, Swan. I will speak English. But you only know bullshit. It is such a shame, though, that you had to bring the pretty girl.” His eyes undressed her. “Ay.” He jerked his head and said a few more words in Spanish.

The men went for their guns. One had a semi-auto.

“Oh, good,” said Ashley dryly. He took off his blazer and handed it to Zari. “I do hate it when mortals try to beat me.”

Zari rolled her eyes as the guns fired. She was fine to play the part of screaming damsel, but, dear God. _Mortals_.

Chest-bare, not a single bullet hole bled as they turned him into Swiss cheese. The force made him stumble a bit, but he didn’t fall. Two of the men stopped almost at once, cursing. One crossed himself. The other emptied every scrap of ammo, more and more terrified. Sandero didn’t move. Impressive for a mortal, but stupid.

Once it was clear they wouldn’t fire anymore, Zari threw the jacket back at Ashley. “Do I look like a coat rack?”

“A very stylish one,” he said. He groaned at the pain of the bullets, but bent to kiss her forehead. Firmly. She always hated it when he did that. It would leave a perfect lipstick print. But it had been so long, she tolerated it and, unwillingly, she smiled.

One more shot. Zari heard it before she felt it. It slammed into the side of her torso and knocked the little breath out of her. Ashley’s lips vanished from her forehead. If there was any idea left in the cartel that he was human, the speed he moved at erased it.

Though Sandero was taller and bigger, Ashley held him a few inches off the ground by his neck. “I was gonna give you a nice death, you know,” said Ashley coldly. “Really. Better than the best sex you ever had. But now you get to live. I promise you, it’s been one hundred fifty years, and living is always worse.”

He dropped Sandero, who scuttled backwards, fleeing from the spotlight of Presence.

“Monroe’s not gonna appreciate that,” said Zari. “Masquerade and shit.”

“Fuck him,” he snapped. “Now there’s two each. Sandero gets to go back to Tijuana, knowing he saw _something_ , and no one will ever believe him. But, maybe, he will be a little more respectful next time.”

The gunmen would’ve had to pass Ashley and Zari to get to the cars. Maybe they thought they were smart, but it was more the Presence, or something worse. An instinct of prey that recognised a predator. They ran.

“You want me to pick the lead out of you before or after?” she asked with a grin.

Ashley licked his thumb and scrubbed at the lipstick he had left on her forehead. “Before. Let’s give them a running start.”

“Hold your breath.”

Zari plunged headfirst into the dizzying speed of Celerity. It was the closest to adrenaline she had felt in ages. Her nails ripped through the skin and surface tissue. The shards seemed to hover as she pulled them out. When she stepped back, they all fell at once, a tinkle of steel on stone.

Ashley smiled. “Ow. Come on, baby. Last one to drain theirs is a milkfang bitch.”

And he vanished. One of the dots speeding off in the distance collapsed and had a moment to scream.

Zari hadn’t moved. Her nails were full of his blood. It wasn’t from his vein. There was no threat of the bond. Absently, she licked her fingers. It was so sweet. The promise of that much fresh hot blood, drunk guiltlessly to the black, it didn’t appeal to her. And it did. For the first time in decades, her and the Beast were out of synch.

All she wanted was to go home. A home in Westside, a nice apartment, maybe late-night TV or a movie. An old repeat. It wasn’t too late yet. A snuggle under a blanket. When did she get so boring?

Zari would follow Ashley, she knew. She could be a milkfang bitch for one night. A last night. They could laugh and kill and drink. But she wouldn’t let him drink from her again. She wouldn’t let him put his hands on her, his lips on her.

She loved him, she knew. She loved him and he loved her. And it wasn’t enough. She couldn’t trust him, didn’t want him, or the life he wanted with her. She didn’t like who she became around him. He didn’t love her in any way she wanted, as sweet as it tasted, as warm as his arms had been.

And he knew. He knew she wasn’t coming back to him. Not once had he brought up the gambling ring she had suggested. He didn’t weedle their meetings longer with meeting the swanlings or even seeing VV. Not anymore. For what wasn’t between them, he let her have it. She didn’t know how she could ever thank him.


	35. Beyond the Sun

How had Jack never seen them before? The spirits that hung around the natural world — vila, Orsay called them. Old Tzimisce magic. Mischievous and smart, but more like a little kid than anything that wanted talking to. Something more, even, than vampires. All they really wanted in exchange for doing things was a drink or snack. Milk. Blood. Beer. Jack could respect that. 

He let his eyes slide half out of focus and the whispery creatures took form, like warbling air over a fire. Some small like dolls, others bigger than people. The natural foci of branches and water on the table had gone stale, almost decayed, as they fed on the energies. The bowl — in Orsay’s usual dramatic fashion, it was a skull — had been emptied. In return, the dinky necklace had an aura that made the hair on his hands stand up.

Bam. Enchantment. And  _ he _ had done it. Nevermind bullshit about ley lines and —

Nevermind. Just, nevermind.

Jack glanced upwards. Hot sweat marked his face and he wiped it off on his designated sweat towel. “Can we do my jacket next? I wanna try something with more dimensions than just a necklace.”

Orsay sat with her legs crossed high at the knee at the dining table. She had taken some of her layers off — a shawl, a turtleneck, a fucking  _ cape _ — but always seemed to have more on underneath. The Merry Poppins’ bag of red clothes. When she exposed bare arms, Jack had been stunned to see she had skin under all of it.

All the furniture, brought down out of the spooky Beverly Glen manor, looked a lot more seventies grandmother in the outdated home. Even the ritual room that dominated the family room had dozens of mason jars of odd bits and pieces, as well as a creepy ceramic cat. Jack had asked if it came to life. Turned out it was the house of the local vila of the eastern wind. He had learned to not ask anymore questions. Ghosts, he had thought at first, but in the well-lit areas outlines could be glimpsed. With practice, he could pinpoint them. Spirits of the land of California.

“We are all living in the third dimension,” said Orsay, exasperated, as she always was. “Exploring further dimensions is far advanced and, I promise, no jackets are to be found there.”

“No, man,” said Jack, grinning with excitement. He stood on shaking legs to grab his leather jacket where he had left it. Blackness edged at his vision. “This jacket. I’m talking more about emotional dimensions and components. This is already attuned to my spirit. It’s something I wear on the nightly, it’s got memories, it’s soaked enough of my blood over thirty years.”

“No,” she said, relishing the denial. “Sit. Before you keel over.”

Jack sat. “Are we gonna have tea?”

Orsay glowered, but her eyes twinkled like blood red stars. “No, but you should pace yourself. You’ve done a lot tonight. There is only so far you can stretch before you snap.”

He wiped his nose and grimaced to find it drooling a blood-tinged slime. He wiped it on his jacket for the spell. “Yeah. I get it. But, we can still plan, can’t we?”

“In the clan, apprentices—”

“I’m an  _ apprentice _ ?” asked Jack, struck dumb.

Orsay gazed at him impassively. “If you have a word you prefer, let me know.”

Apprentice. Apprentice.  _ Apprentice _ .

Someone worth teaching magic. He had thought they were just working together — on behalf of Switzerland. After all, Monroe said so. Painstakingly slowly, they had worked their way through about half the sewer grates and entrances. The wards against ghouls would keep by szlachta, but if there were Tzimisce capable of crafting szlachta, there were Tzimisce capable of disarming the wards. At first, it was stiff. Orsay didn’t say much. When she did, it was a not-threat, combined with a not-smile. But Jack could tell she liked it when he rambled or joked.

_ Apprentice _ .

Right now, he couldn’t think of anything.

“You charge an arm and a leg to teach magic,” he said.

She not-smiled. “I charge far more than that.”

Jack narrowed his eyes. “Was that a joke?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Was  _ that _ a joke?”

“No. It was a factual statement.”

“I think it was a joke.”

Slowly, Orsay started to smile. “Maybe. You remind me of my little brother.” As though she had said some terrible swear, she covered her mouth and stood suddenly.

“What?” asked Jack. “Did you not like him or something? I’m sorry, on our behalf.”

She waved a hand and one of the vila lifted the talismans, counting. They fell with a clatter when she turned. “I said before. I will not take part of emotional declarations and foolish bleeding hearts.”

“I don’t need you to.”

“This is not it,” she assured him. She rubbed her lips together uncertainly before sitting with him again. “My name, Grimaldi. Do you know it?” Jack shook his head. “It is a revenant family of Clan Tzimisce. I was born an unbound ghoul, as was my mother and father, back centuries. We handled the mortal world for a viovide and bishop in eastern Poland. On occasion, he came to the family. Sometimes, to choose a childe. I have since learned of my luck, that he was stern but not… excessively cruel. I’ve thought many times of returning, but America suits me.”

“And your brother?” asked Jack gently. “Is he alive?”

Orsay hmm’d. “I don’t know. He might be. Part of me hopes he was Embraced, too.”

Jack kept his own opinions about that quiet, but not very well.

“You think I’m a monster,” she said calmly. “Are you so divorced from your Cainite nature to think our existence is without meaning?”

He wanted to put a pin in this conversation, stop it before it broke the suddenly fragile peace. “I find meaning in other things — and that’s okay,” he said.

Orsay frowned, curious. “Such as? Look to your veins and you carry the secret legacy of Caine, Enoch, Ennoia. The Father’s anger and pride roosts in your heart, Enoch’s sovereignty, Ennoia’s wildness. The unbroken line connects our kind to the weft and weave of time.”

“Thought you weren’t a Noddist like the other Hollowmen,” he said bitterly.

“Caine is not an example,” she said simply. “He is our cautionary tale. The nature of what he has passed on cannot be ignored. But, we can stop.” Orsay stood again and collected the talismans. Amulets, she had called them. Six, in total, that would provide near immunity to other spells. “Do you know how the Tremere came to be?”

Jack blinked. “Human wizards made a new spell.”

“Even low clans suffer by the Anarchs,” she mused. “Your sire likely did not know. The Tremere abducted Tzimisce for decades, experimenting, before they extracted their elixir. The new clan added Gangrel and Nosferatu to their prisons, wherein they turned fledglings into Gargoyles. Magical golems, wiped of individuality, brutalized into compliance.”

It was then that Jack noticed that, under her many layers, Orsay wore an amulet like the ones they had just made. “You’re scared,” he said before he could stop himself.

She rounded on him. “No,” she said coldly, “but we all have our enemies. Clan Lasombra have hunted their antitribu since time began. Azalea is right to prepare herself. Old Clan Tzimisce are more lenient, but it is wise to treat warlocks with caution and respect. Especially when they never have returned the courtesy.”

Jack had been thinking a lot lately about what they’d do when the sky came falling down. Could he find it in himself to go back for Ryuko? Would he tell Dustin or Sage’s girls? Did Charlie or Damsel need him? Would it just be best to go find Monroe or Orsay and stick close? Jack couldn’t say who was the most valuable to protect, but he could say who was the most vulnerable. Everyone else had someone to look after them.

“Your enemies are my enemies,” he said.

Orsay hid her surprise and extended an amulet. “Take it. Wear it. If I refuse to cast the first stone, it lies clear that I will take the first hit.”

Jack took it. The steel wire bound a topaz tight. When he squeezed, he could feel the vila’s energy whirring within. He tucked it under his shirt. “Thank you.”

She didn’t register his thanks. “When you came tonight, you asked for a favour before you started?”

“When shit meets fan, there’s a… human and his family that I wanna make sure no one gets to,” he said.

Orsay put the lids back to the jars Jack had opened. Silver needles. Moon water. Intricately knotted silk threads. “The Sabbat won’t even think of humans, unless the siege hits a stalemate before their destruction.”

“How likely is that?” asked Jack. “That we can’t destroy them?”

“East LA held them at a stalemate for forty years. The Anarchs don’t have the strength. It’ll depend on the Camarilla.”

_ It’ll depend on the Camarilla. _ Jack didn’t like the sound of that. All it did was make the hairs on his neck stand up, puzzle pieces hover threateningly. From day one, Monroe had gone talking to the Valley Prince. They hadn’t attacked Switzerland — yet. But did Monroe know that, months ago? That the Sabbat would come screaming and they’d need a nuclear bomb, like, in the form of an archon or two?

Even after Orsay had given him a little something as a gift, she had called Dustin his “little pet”. Suppose that was better than trying to eat him.

The LA Zoo closed at five PM, well before sunset, and by the time Jack got there, everyone had gone home. The parking lot and ticket booths were deserted. Except for one lonely car, and one lonely guy leaning against it.

Jack slipped back onto two legs a distance before Dustin could see him. No more falling out of trees.

Dustin looked to the zoo’s doors with a grimace. “Hey, man. I’m really not so sure about this. Breaking in—”

“It’s not breaking in if we don’t break anything. Besides, don’t you wanna meet some animals? Pet some bears? Ride a giraffe? Shake hands with a monkey?”

Dustin reached into his car and pulled out a plastic grocery bag. He smiled sheepishly. “I brought steak for the lions.”

Jack clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”

Jack and the zoo were old friends. Sometimes, on the worst of nights, other licks and gangs thought it’d be fun to see what gorillas tasted like. Causing trouble. Garica would give them a slap on the wrist and life moved on. Jack just wanted to hang out. When he had first brought it up to Dustin, explaining Gangrel Disciplines, his jaw had dropped.

Jack gave Dustin a piggyback ride as he clawed his way up the crumbling western wall. Clambering over the faux rocks, it dropped them off in a bird exhibit. Herbivores, some storky things. They gave a collective squawk of complaint and resettled a distance away.

Jack was about to let his eyes adjust to the blackness — a predator’s nightvision. When he and Dustin made it to the main path, he stopped them. “Did you bring that flashlight?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Dustin, excited to remember it. The blinding ray of artificial light played over the trees. Nocturnal beasts sniffed curiously. Day-timers complained at the disturbance. “Wow,” he whispered. “The leopards are never this active.”

Like ghosts, the big cats appeared and disappeared through the trees.

“You basically lived here as a kid, didn’t you?” asked Jack.

Dustin nodded with a grin. “Can we get closer?”

“Always.”

Jack knew all the back ways. By himself, he knew the cougar could make the jump or climb into enclosures, and the wings could fly. Dustin needed two-legged paths, though. Years ago, Jack had managed to get his paws on a ring of keys. The backdoors opened to him.

Predator recognised predator. And, somehow, the wild beasts recognised their place in the food chain. Animalism opened a line of communication. The leopards were a male-female pair, the male new and brought in for mating. The female knew Jack, by face and scent, and crouched low and submissive.

Jack clicked his tongue. “Come on, girl. Play nice. Slow, come to me.”

She edged towards them, blinking against the glare of Dustin’s flashlight.

“Holy shit,” whispered Dustin. “Jack—”

“She’s safe,” he said, almost sure. He kept an eye up on the male, who slunk back beyond where the flashlight reached. The smallest whisper of leaves marked his movement.

Dustin sat on the ground and took out a family pack of steaks. The female’s nose twitched and she edged closer, faster. 

“He’s good,” Jack insisted, and the female stuck her tongue out and licked the plastic grocery bag. “Don’t you eat him, girl.”

Dustin ripped through the plastic and threw her a good sized steak. She came closer to eat it and — heart thudding loudly, breath whistling through clenched teeth — Dustin reached out to pet her. She ate noisily, powerful teeth gnashing through the ribeye.

He laughed uneasily. “I… I never thought I’d do this until I worked somewhere. God, she’s  _ beautiful _ . Mom never even let us have a cat.”

She swallowed the rest of the steak, licking her lips.

“Under her chin,” said Jack with a grin. “She likes that.”

“That close to the teeth?” Dustin’s laugh became a little more of a whimper.

Jack rolled his eyes and dragged Dustin’s hand under the chin. The female vibrated, her eyes drifting shut as she nodded along with the pleasure. Hesitating, the male slipped from the tree and ventured closer, lured by the smell of raw meat. Jack threw him a steak and he ate, further away.

The male came around, eventually. But there was more than leopards in the zoo and only so many hours in the night. Jack felt like an ass dragging away the increasingly confident Dustin, but the alligators were cute and feisty, the giraffes had new babies, and lions wanted steak, too.

By the time they found themselves walking on the paths again, it was almost time to leave. Dustin was grinning ear-to-ear, like his birthday came early. Jack’s mind was still hours behind, in Orsay’s new house, thinking about the Sabbat and the Camarilla. It took a lot for Dustin to notice, but he did eventually.

“Got something on your mind?”

Jack stopped them and pulled a small stone from his pocket. Dark grey-green and veined with black, carved with silver needles, soaked in blood, and polished with dew. It hung on a black cord. “It’s a weirstone. Like… magic GPS and one-way radio. It can send thoughts, you to me. So, if you’re in danger, I’ll know where and how. Oh.” Jack frowned. “I got a phone, too. Should probably give you that number.”

Dustin took it and slung it around his neck. Jack could feel it if he focused, a hum at the back of his mind. “Cool. Never had a dude give me jewelry before.” He smiled, but even the excitement of the night wasn’t enough to hold it. “Do you think I’m gonna be in danger? Things changed?”

“No. Not really.” Jack stuck his hands in his jeans and kept walking. “But it’s not your problem. I want… I just want to be a nice trip for you sometimes, you know? Some advice, if I can. I don’t wanna be that lick that collects humans like bugs or slaves. You got your own life and I want you to keep it.”

Dustin kicked a pebble off the road and pocketed the weirstone. “No offence, but I got no intentions of being a vampire or hanging with… werewolves and witches and fairies and goblins.”

“Goblins aren’t real.”

“Of course,” said Dustin with a snort. “Of course. Because fairies are much more realistic.” He sighed. “Look. I’m with you. You’re a good friend. I have a hard time finding those.”

A smile started in Jack’s chest and grew on his lips. “Thanks. I mean, you, too. I don’t got many friends, really, either.”

“Are the animals making you hungry?” he asked, concerned.

“No,” said Jack, disgusted at the thought. “I’ve been around a while. My hunger’s in check. I’ll just eat when I get back. I got a buddy, where we’re all hanging, and he’s got cold blood — donations, mostly.”

“You know, I asked my rabbi about magic,” said Dustin casually. “He said it would be better for it to be cast by a Jewish mystic, but, if it’s life-saving, everything goes.”

“Your… rabbi talked to you about magic?” repeated Jack with a terrible sinking feeling. The last thing he needed was for it to get back to Monroe.

He shrugged. “Yeah. He loved it. We got into a really good discussion about pikuach nefesh. He just wanted me to know that, if magic necklaces that shoot lightning bolts exist, some patchouli-smelling hippie won’t be making them.”

“Well, this one doesn’t shoot lightning bolts,” said Jack faintly. “And don’t go telling your rabbi about your vampire friend.”

Dustin bit his lip.

Jack groaned. “You didn’t.”

“We just talked, theoretically, about donating blood to a vampire,” said Dustin in a small voice. “If you asked, I wanted to know my answer. If you needed a kidney, I’d be there for you, man. And this would be a lot safer. Shit, I donate blood to Red Cross when I remember.”

Jack laughed harshly. “I think, for any kinda religion, it’s more about asking if we’re demons cursed by God.”

Dustin got real quiet and Jack wondered if he had said the wrong thing. Why did he say that? He was being an ass.

“Just because you got cursed,” said Dustin, “doesn’t mean you deserve to stay cursed. You’re doing good shit. You’re a good guy.”

Jack was about to argue, but he couldn’t find a good argument. For the first time in a long time, when someone said that, he didn’t have a rebuttal. The usual ones fell flat. Skelter, Damsel, Kanker, Ryuko — they were adults, they made choices. He wasn’t responsible for them. Maybe Monroe had to say something three times for Jack to remember it, but he always did. It wasn’t malicious. He did what he could to protect his humans. He knew their names, paid their mortgages, helped more than one stay sober. 

Just because he felt lost, it didn’t make him a loser.

“Thanks,” said Jack thickly. “Right back at you.”

They had gotten to the front gates again. Dustin sprawled over a granite bench — or maybe modern art piece. Jack sat next to him.

“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” asked Dustin quietly.

Jack jerked a shrug. “There’s blood at home. And… thanks for the offer, but I’m not gonna.”

Dustin had the nerve to look offended. “What? Don’t like B-negative?”

“Biting is…” He looked for a nice way to put it. “...really,  _ really _ good. Not necessarily sexual, but in that… It’s there, sort of, off to the side. And—”

“I’m interested.” Dustin’s hands crinkled in the grocery bag.

Jack raised both eyebrows. “Interested in getting bit? Man, that’s—”

“Interested in you, dumbass.”

“Oh.  _ Oh. _ ” Jack stared. “Why? You could have a normal human life—”

“I’m sure I will,” said Dustin, trying to hold back laughter and not doing a great job. “I got classes to finish. Hopefully, I’ll work here in another five years. Maybe I’ll meet a nice Jewish man to bring home to my parents — my dad’s only condition when I came out. But. I mean. Now? For now, I got a really cool friend, who takes me on sweet dates he knows I’ll love—”

“This wasn’t a date,” said Jack, suddenly frightened.

He smiled. “Wasn’t it?”

The smile didn’t take away his fear, but it filed the edge off. “I just wanted to have a nice time with you.”

“So. A date. Shit.” Dustin sat up like a string in his spine pulled him straight. A prickle of sweat shone on his forehead. “Did I — I didn’t get this wrong, did I? You are  _ interested _ , right?”

Jack turned his eyes off Dustin’s, but there wasn’t anywhere else to look. The trees were too dodgy, the ground had their legs, the space between the bench their hands. Who did he have left to be embarrassed for? His parents? His boss? Side-eyes at the market? Fuck. Monroe kept Ashley Swan around. Orsay would wrinkle her nose at Dustin’s humanness — being a man probably wouldn’t even factor into it.

And what was there left to be disloyal to?

“Yeah.” Jack swallowed. “Yeah, I am.”

“You don’t need to bite me,” he whispered. “Just… close your eyes.”

Jack did. A warm hand tilted his face up, and dry lips burned against his. As his lips parted, air breathed into him. The heat flowed into him, an anxious heated breath. He put his arms around him, fingers finding curly—

Curly?

Jack realised he was kissing Ryuko in his mind. He pulled backwards. 

Dustin smiled, biting his lips to remember the taste, face flushed. “Was that alright?”

“No. But I’ll make it.”

Jack killed the memory of Ryuko in his mind and kissed Dustin.

  
  


Charlie hated Sears. She hated department stores in general, but especially Sears. She hated Sears because Monroe specifically told her to go to Sears. And department stores at night were creepy as all fuck. Clothes half hanging off racks. Furniture displayed for no one. No employees. No customers. Nothing but a soft meaningless music over the staticy loudspeakers and too much off-white and underpaid associates.

“Didn’t you have a lamp?” asked Justin.

But Charlie didn’t have anything aside from a cat anymore. And the cat was in a hotel room miles away listening to Lloyd play bad guitar and Red fawn over him. She wanted her cat.

“My lamp was a lot cooler than that,” said Charlie.

She had lost everything. Part of her almost wished Monroe hadn’t killed Fortier. If he were alive, she’d have someone to blame instead of drifting.

At least her jacket couldn’t be scavenged from the ruins of the Moon. It saved her from throwing out the button Jesse had given her on Christmas. Had that really only been a couple months ago? Charlie remembered the awkward anxious surprise when Jesse gave the inconsequential present. The promise of something soft under the hard bad girl exterior. When Charlie managed to call Jesse, the reunion was painful, tear-streaked, apologetic on both sides. 

Charlie had a life to build. She wanted Jesse to be a part of it.

She didn’t know who or what  _ was _ part of her life now. Justin was, maybe. Probably Rhys. D&D.

But Monroe? Prince candidate hopeful? Along with his archon and the Camarilla.

Months ago, when Charlie was new and scared, the thinblood Rosa had warned her. It was the most Charlie had ever heard the girl speak.  _ Forgive him _ . She thought it for then. Maybe it was for now. She had taken a leap of faith for him, trusting that whoever Jan had been, it wasn’t so bad. It was worse. The Cobweb didn’t like him. Charlie liked him less.

And she didn’t like what she saw when she spotted Monroe these days.

A shrill  _ schring _ of metal on metal as Grimes pushed aside hangers. Always Grimes. Never Zach. Of the weird gang of Monroe’s leftovers Charlie had fallen into, he was the only one who looked like Monroe had sired him. Pretty Ivy League face, lacrosse shoulders, the same hard look in his eye that Monroe and Red had. Charlie wondered if that was a result of Ventrue — or of the Camarilla.

Grimes raised a single neat eyebrow and offered her a hanger.

It was a jean jacket. Men’s small. Stiff, dark wash denim.

“Thanks,” she said in a small voice.

He tilted his head and ventured back to the men’s section again. The abruptness left her empty. Like he didn’t get how much the small gesture meant. But he did. He was Monroe’s childe. They all were, in some way, for better or worse. And Monroe was distant, aloof, emotionless but not unfeeling. Grimes knew.

“Was  _ this _ your lamp?” asked Justin.

She held the jacket closer. “Almost.”

Justin dropped it in the increasingly full cart. “Good enough for government work. Hey. Did you give it any thought?”

Charlie grimaced. “I don’t know, man.”

Justin wheeled them deeper into homegoods. He sniffed deeply and noisily. “I can smell it. Lloyd’s gonna bail any minute and shack up with Red. Grimes is looking to invest in rental property — because he’s got the real Ventrue genes. There’s no point in us both being on our own. Hawthorne says it could take months to rebuild.”

Charlie  _ liked _ being on her own. Or maybe she just had gotten used to it. Even living above Blue Moon, she had always felt alone. It was a nice feeling.

That was what she told herself, at least.

“Maybe,” she relented.

Justin whooped. “We’re gonna have a blast. Movie night. Do you like board games?”

“Sure.” She cracked a smile.

“I got some pretty sick ones I could show you. And you could show me LA. Oh, man, I haven’t had a roommate in  _ ages _ .”

Charlie tried hard to forget what Monroe had said about Justin, that he had gotten in a bad spot with the Baltimore prince and had to flee — and then flee Lloyd. “Didn’t make friends in New Orleans?”

Justin stuck his tongue out. “New Orleans is about as close to an Anarch city as the Cam lets it get. All noise, can’t hear yourself think. Fuck, I think Monroe’s older than the prince. Lower Gen, too. It’s a dangerous place to live.”

“So’s LA,” said Charlie. She had sort of gotten the impression.

“Yeah, but, surviving’s all about getting a big enough shadow to stand in. Either find it or make yourself that motherfucker no one touches, but that takes decades.”

“That’s right.” Grimes’ quietness startled them. He almost smiled. “Sorry. Justin’s right, though. It’s why a lot of high clans  _ like _ Anarch cities: no competition. Here, my three decades could make me a player. In Boston, it made me my sire’s errand boy.”

“And now you get to be Monroe’s errand boy,” said Charlie before she could stop herself.

Grimes had a funny look to him. Something told Charlie she could trust him — something more than Monroe — but he had that holier-than-thou demeanor. No smirk. No glare. Just a slightly raised chin and indulgent smile. She wondered if this was what it was like to have cousins. You were supposed to want to punch cousins, right?

“Everyone needs someone to run errands,” said Grimes diplomatically. “A go-getter like Monroe? He has a lot of errands.”

Charlie wrinkled her nose, offended on Monroe’s behalf. “A  _ go-getter _ ?”

“Once he sinks his teeth in, he doesn’t let go,” said Justin. He pulled them across to the nearest cashier. “Shit. I wasn’t with him more than six months and I figured that one out. What about you, Grimes?”

“Three months, at first. He returned me to my sire and… hung at the edge of Boston.”

Charlie digested that uneasily. She’d been with Monroe the same amount of time. And, he hadn’t made such a bomb impression on her. She couldn’t imagine being away for decades and answering a cell call to move cross country on a dime for him. It didn’t give her a rosy picture for the rest of vampire society.

“Was he always… like that?” she asked.

Justin smirked, but Grimes only wrinkled his brow.

“How do you mean?” asked Grimes.

“Yeah,” said Justin. “Tells you to pick up your socks. Beats up your bully. Frankly, I think I might be the only person here who  _ wasn’t _ surprised by Garcia’s end.”

“But  _ diablerie _ —” protested Grimes.

“This is the Wild West, partner,” he said, affecting an accent. “Last free lands in a country where ain’t nothing so-called civilized.”

“We don’t need laws to dictate decent actions,” said Grimes stiffly. He handed a credit card to an exhausted cashier who was doing his best to not pay attention. When Charlie argued, he said, “Oh, be quiet, childe.”

As they loaded her new purchases into the car, she mulled over Grimes’ words. Morality. But did common human morality really apply to vampires? LAPD and the courts never could’ve taken care of Garcia for kidnapping Bella. Charlie had killed — by accident, in rage, and on purpose. It didn’t bother her.

It didn’t bother her.

Maybe she and Monroe had more in common than she liked to think. It wasn’t a comforting thought.

Grimes and Justin might have thought about getting their own places, but, for the moment, they all lived in a series of connected hotel rooms — like some extended, unwelcome family reunion. Vinyl blackout stickers covered the windows of the fancy-ass place. She could’ve surfed in the bathtub. Unmade beds and half-opened suitcases containing all their worldly belongings stretched across the floor.

Before they opened the doors, they heard the yowling and an acoustic guitar. Oreo was not a fan of Lloyd’s music. Red was the only one who  _ did _ like it, as a matter of fact.

Lloyd glanced up as they muscled in. “Didja get shit for the shitless?”

Charlie lifted the heavy bag. “The shitless has gotten shit.”

They unpacked and Charlie rustled to put her hastily bought clothes into her new suitcase. At the bottom, she had tucked a deck of tarot. Somehow, even as Blue Moon had been bombed and almost burned to the ground, she found her tarot, almost untouched. Her fingers trembled as they found the hard shape hidden under layers of t-shirts. It was a sign. But a sign of what? That she was supposed to delve into the Cobweb, lose herself in the nightmare?

“You  _ really _ need to stop before I go all Pete Townshend on that guitar,” said Justin through gritted teeth.

Lloyd strummed another tuneless chord. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Gonna have to find another way to carpet-match.”

If vampires could blush, Red would’ve turned as cherry as her hair.

Lloyd threw down the guitar and attempted to square up, but Grimes was there first. He had taken off his jacket, but put a hand on both Justin and Lloyd.

“Civilized,” snapped Grimes. “We’re all grown, here. Some of us more than others. Justin, it is no concern of yours who Lloyd does what with, but that was uncalled for. Apologize to Red.”

“It weren’t meant for her—”

“Do it now,” said Grimes. “And do it right.”

“Or what?” Justin bared his fangs. “You’ll tell Dad?”

Grimes didn’t answer. He only glared until Justin winced and backed off.

“I’m sorry, Red,” he said heavily. “I got mad and it wasn’t fair to take it out on you. Lloyd’s not your fault. And, you’re actually really pretty.” He gave a weak smile. “And, it doesn’t matter if the carpet matches the drapes.”

Red relaxed. “Thank you.”

Grimes slid a hand down his face. “That was… good enough, I suppose. And Lloyd.” He groaned. “Please. Get some lessons. These cramped quarters are temporary, but self-improvement is always a road that pays off. Hobbies and passion will make your years more enjoyable.”

Lloyd’s eyes swept Grimes. “Fuck off with the wise sage shit. I got like ten years on you, homie.”

“Maybe you should act like it.”

“Maybe you should keep your nose out of my business.” Lloyd shoved Grimes. Not hard, but enough to give a warning that he was down to fight.

Charlie picked up her lava lamp out of the danger zone and took the chair Lloyd had left. Red and her exchanged an exhausted smile.

“Why are men like this?” asked Charlie.

“I would say it’s the testosterone, but I’m not even sure we still have hormones like that.” Red watched the exchange, entertained, as Grimes struggled to contain his dignified calm as Lloyd kept poking him.

“If you’re gonna brawl, we should go out in the street,” said Justin sensibly.

“Don’t think yuppie knows what a punch is,” said Lloyd with a grin. With a flash, he shoved him again.

Grimes grabbed Lloyd and threw him to the floor. “Enough,” he shouted. “ _ Enough _ . I’m not going to fight you. The only reason I’m tolerating what is possibly the worst living situation I could possibly imagine is for Monroe. No matter how obnoxious and  _ irritating _ ,” he snarled through gritted teeth, “we all have shown we repay loyalty with loyalty. We will never be brothers. But you need to respect me the way I respect you.”

Lloyd stared. He exchanged a befuddled look with Justin.

“Jeez, it was just a joke,” muttered Lloyd. He picked himself off the ground with as much pride as he could.

“I think I’m gonna retire,” said Red as Lloyd approached her again.

“Ditto,” said Charlie, clutching her lava lamp.

Lloyd snorted, but picked his guitar up again. Before they could start another argument, Charlie and Red took a quick exit to a neighbouring room. It was scarcely more clean, at least Charlie’s side, but Red’s bed was made with military corners.

Charlie closed to the door to the sound of Lloyd and Justin yelling again. “How did those boys ever manage to live with each other?” she asked Red, bewildered.

“Not long,” she said crisply. Red pulled her knitting out of a drawer and settled down. The rhythmic click-clack was almost hypnotic.

Charlie plugged in the lava lamp and waited for it to heat up. She wondered how Zari was doing deep into Westside. Charlie hadn’t heard anything since Zari had left. Most of her was scared of bad news.

“What’s the Camarilla like?” asked Charlie.

Red thought for a moment and set down her needles. “That’s probably a simple sounding question with an impossible answer,” she said wryly. “It’s harsh, but what could that possibly mean to you? The older I get, the more I realise life’s always harsh for us. Our brief moments of selfishness carry weight, more than anyone should have to bare.”

“I was meaning more like a prince,” she said, trying to shutter out Red’s other words. She had already learned that lesson. “What was Dallas like?”

Red started knitting again. “Fine. I worked in a marketing firm when I was breathing. Same as any other corporation. You got those sorts who are happy as middle-management, those in the mail room eyeing the CEO desk. Room to climb, room to fall. The prince occupied himself mostly with his own problems. Rivalries never bothered most people. It was hardly democracy, but there was law and order. For some, that’s everything.”

In the other room, Justin and Lloyd stopped yelling. Grimes put on a CD to stop the terrible guitar. A new argument brewed over the artist.

Charlie lay flat on her back, fingers still stroking the growing heat. The bumps in the popcorn ceiling grew shapes like constellations. “What… What if the Camarilla won here?”

Red didn’t answer for a long time and Charlie wondered if she had decided this conversation over. “The Camarilla  _ will _ win,” she said in a low voice. “Lloyd probably won’t be happy, but Monroe’ll put himself in a position to protect what he has — that includes all those people in Silver Lake and, more importantly, us. He will likely become a warden. Warden of Central LA or something. Like a… senator.”

“And what happens to us?”

The ceiling didn’t answer her, but Red did.

“Monroe’ll take care of us,” she promised. “We’ll have a place in whatever comes out of LA. He wouldn’t have called if he were not certain.”

Charlie wasn’t so sure. She tried to remind herself. Monroe could’ve let Garica deal with her, as a new fledgling breaking laws. He could’ve let her die. He could’ve let Garcia have Bella. He could’ve told Jack she had killed the Professor. He could’ve let her burn in Blue Moon. He could’ve lied to her about Jan. He could’ve thrown her out when she chopped her hair.

He had tied her tie.

Maybe he shouldn’t have.

“The Monroe you knew, in Dallas a couple decades ago, would he burn down Disneyland?” asked Charlie. “Would he kill… like that?”

Red didn’t have an answer to that, but the ceiling did.


	36. The Echo

Jesse didn’t turn up at D&D. She didn’t answer her phone. She hadn’t in a couple of days, actually. Charlie started to worry something had happened. Everyone else, she could call someone. Midnight had her sister and Lionel. Orion had the Reapers. Copper had the other thinbloods. Rhys, maybe, was the only other one who didn’t have anyone. 

The worst part was that no one complained. Things just went better when Jesse wasn’t around. When the game finished, Charlie put a show on the TV. Rubio must’ve raided a BestBuy or something. With free reign to move tables and bring things, Medusa’s main room turned into a vampire YMCA. Luckily, all that the vampires did was play games and watch movies.

Charlie put on  _ Cowboy Bebop _ , like maybe it could summon Jesse. Besides, Midnight liked anime, too. Orion drew his line in the sand of “this nerd stuff” and grudgingly took Rhys to play cards with the Reapers.

They made it through two episodes before Jesse entered.

“Cthulhu has risen,” said Rhys meanly. “I guess the Call of Jesse really is anime.”

Jesse didn’t even raise to the bite. Rhys was never that forward with his barbs. When Charlie turned, she saw why. Jesse was a complete mess, hanging open. Emotionally, held together with duct tape and a prayer. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a bed in days. Her hair was dirty and matted, her shoulders hunched and trembling.

Charlie bolted up, but hesitated. What could possibly have upset Jesse this much? Was she dangerous? No. No, not here. Jesse wouldn’t dare assault Charlie in Medusa, in front of a score of witnesses. Immediately, Charlie felt terrible for even having to think that.

She rushed forward and Jesse fell in her arms wordlessly. There was no breath, no heartbeat, no half-assed attempt at either. Eventually, she wrapped her arms around Charlie and squeezed.

Charlie started to notice they were getting the attention of the dining room, and pulled Jesse back outside onto the street. Together, they slid against the wall. Jesse slid further and sunk her head into Charlie’s lap. Fingers gnarled in her t-shirt. The first breath she drew straggled through her chest.

“It’s alright, babe,” said Charlie, inches from crying herself. “Whatever… I swear—”

“Hollywood.”

Charlie blinked. The word tore itself out of Jesse like a rocket of spit and fire. She feared the worst. Monroe went to Hollywood tonight.

“What happened in Hollywood?” she asked quietly.

At the thought, Jesse managed to regain some strength. She wiped her eyes and nose and sat back. “Cesar.”

“Oh, fuck,” whispered Charlie. Her head fell into her hands, palms digging out her eyes like she could unsee the word.

Apparently she hadn’t been fearing the worst. Fuck Ashley. Who’s stupid idea was it to let him keep the Society as ghouls? Fuck.

By the time, Charlie looked at Jesse again, she had recovered. No. Not recovered. It had only hurt Jesse more. Her eyes were wide with surprised hurt. Shock stopped her bloodstained tears. Slowly, her head swayed back and forth.

“No,” said Jesse desperately. “No. No. No.  _ No.  _ Not you. You… You didn’t. You  _ knew _ what’d been done to them?”

“Jess—”

“He didn’t recognise me,” said Jesse, whimpering. “I just saw him on the street and he — I ran up to meet him and — Nothing.  _ Nothing _ . Like, no one home.”

“God, Jess, I’m so sorry,” pleaded Charlie. She reached out a hand but Jesse flinched away.

“Fuck you.” Jesse gnawed through her lip to keep herself together. “You lied to me — like  _ this _ ? Fuck. How could you even know about this and not do something?” Her hands clawed through her head. “You don’t just turn a blind eye to evil shit — even if it’s you.”

“I didn’t wanna hurt you,” said Charlie weakly. It was true, but not even most of the reason, and Jesse saw through it.

“Bullshit.”

“I love—”

“Don’t you dare.” Jesse looked at her again. Like a stranger. Like an enemy. “I thought, maybe, you were different. Maybe —  _ Maybe _ I had been wrong, that maybe I had killed vampires that shouldn’t have been dusted. I mean. Rhys is an asshole, but there are assholes everywhere. Doesn’t mean you can take a twelve-gauge to the jackass that doesn’t bring something to the potluck. But…”

“I am different,” she insisted. “And, so are you. We might be mythical monsters, but we gotta find a way to live. Life doesn’t need to be this vengeance spree. You can settle, here, with me. The others’ll like you.”

“I’m gonna find out who did this to the Society here,” said Jesse in a slow, measured voice, “and I’m gonna kill them. And you’re never gonna see me again. That’s the way I found to live.”

“Jesse, they’re gonna kill you,” she whispered. Charlie took Jesse’s hand and she let her. 

Jesse thought that over. And over. And over. Her fingers clenched over Charlie’s. Intermittent cars passed by. College kids unloaded from a cheap car in the Denny’s across the street. Laughing. Charlie would’ve given anything to be there.

“I always knew a vampire would kill me,” said Jesse dimly. “One night, I’d run out of luck. Garcia… was worse. I escaped. Cesare can’t. If they just kill me, I’ll die knowing who I am.” Her face twisted and her grip tightened on Charlie’s hand. “Now, you’re gonna tell me who did it.”

“Jesse—”

She was not afraid. She tried to pull her hand away, but Jesse followed her, pushing her back to the ground. Rough asphalt scraped her head. She struggled, but Jesse managed to pin her flat.

Charlie spat at her. “Let me go!”

“Who hit the Society?” demanded Jesse. The more Charlie struggled against the iron grip, the more frantic she became. “Who? Bitch, you better tell me before we break something. Who killed them? Who broke Cesar? Who did it?”

Blood scented the air. Charlie was scared it was her own, but then she felt the drops. Jesse was crying again.

Charlie tried to pull again, but her wrist kinked and cracked. The pain shot up her forearm as the bone broke further. The lights of Medusa and the street absorbed into a blackness of shadow, a private universe of their own tears. The shadow had eyes and ears, but the audience wasn’t eager. It was as agonizing as her own.

“This can get a lot worse,” choked Jesse.

The other wrist snapped, bending backwards until the back of her hand touched her forearm. 

“Monroe,” said Charlie through clenched teeth. “It was Monroe.”

“We’ve been through this, cunt,” she shouted. “It wasn’t him. Tell me—”

“Monroe had Ashley do it. Paid him off.” She whimpered. “Fucking hell. I told you. Get off me.”

Slowly, the darkness receded and Jesse pulled away. Charlie shut her eyes and tried not to think of the unnatural positions her hands were in. Blood. She just fed. It should just heal. Just broken bones, broken skin. That was it. She kept crying as they angled themselves into place.

“You know,” said Jesse from somewhere above her, “when I first came to you guys, Monroe knew I had only ever fed on vampires. He gave me three hits to tide me over until we finished off Garcia.”

Charlie cracked an eye. “What? No.”

“Pierce Jackson, Toreador. Roy Ramos, Caitiff. Thea Reed—”

“I don’t know these people,” snapped Charlie.

“I didn’t know they existed until Monroe gave me their names and addresses,” said Jesse coldly. “I was suspicious. Thought he was trying to get me to do his dirty work. Or get me killed by some Dracula-looking elder. But, those kids, man, they were just kids. Weaklings no one would miss.”

“You killed them,” she said to herself.

“Monroe sacrificed them to keep me happy.” Jesse smirked. “Let’s see what this got him.”

Charlie tried to roll over, but her weak wrist couldn’t support her weight and she fell. “Jesse!” she called, but Jesse turned the corner and headed back to the parking lot. A car sped out of it.

Monroe hadn’t. Of course, he wouldn’t. Look how he had reacted when the Hollowmen killed Jeff Sullivan, how he had butchered Fortier when he  _ almost _ killed him and Charlie. It didn’t make sense. He wouldn’t just up and feed licks to a woodchipper. They were his people, even if they didn’t like him, even if they pissed him off.

But they hadn’t been then.

Charlie had never thought about it. Those early nights, before Jesse had started drinking blood and beer at Blue Moon, where did she go? What did she eat? Monroe said she had made him a promise to stop hunting. But, stop hunting freely or stop hunting except what he said?

Somehow, he had pushed Jesse into the same place Garcia had: his personal hitman. Would he? Could he?

Charlie wasn’t sure he would. But she was pretty sure he could. How desperate were they? Her time in the Valley had felt tense under all the friendliness, but the  _ war, _ as she kept hearing, didn’t have a front. Who was winning?

Not Charlie, at least.

Jesse hadn’t been wrong about one thing. Charlie had known what Ashley was going to do to the Society. Before, even, she had met him. Monroe had told her. She told him it was horrible. He agreed. And, then, he let Ashley do it. And, somewhere along the way, she had stopped reminding Monroe about how evil and horrible this shit was. It wasn’t her job to be his moral compass. 

Especially since her compass had sort of broke.

The door of Medusa opened behind her. Shoes came down the steps, slow, with a groan. And he sat. Male.

Rhys did what her wrists couldn’t and propped her up against the wall again. “Guessing she didn’t need a hug?” He lost his sarcasm when he saw her hands. “What the fuck…”

“My fault, I—”

“You know, I got into trouble with Math Class,” said Rhys quietly. He wouldn’t look at her. “Dogface. Well. I was a real weepy-ass mess when I got there. My sire, my lover, he… It wouldn’t be fair, I guess, to say he abandoned me. Point is, Dogface wormed it out that I was a fag. Eighty-four. Not a great time to be crying over an ex-boyfriend.” 

“I didn’t know you were gay,” said Charlie in a small voice.

“You thought I was straight? I’m offended.” He sat down on the stoop, scrawny knees pulled tight to his chest. “Made me angry. Everything made me angry those nights. We got into a fight. He broke my leg in, like, four places. Point is, the Professor said to me that, when someone hurts you because they hate you, it’s not your fault. Doesn’t matter if you poked the sleeping dragon. Dragons aren’t supposed to be vicious.”

“She doesn’t hate me,” she said, but she didn’t know. She didn’t feel like she knew anything anymore. Not about Jesse. Not about Monroe. And definitely not about herself.

Rhys grabbed her from under the armpits and hoisted her to her feet. Charlie followed, wincing, as he guided her back into the dining room. Behind the bar, the coolers were stocked with blood. Rhys poured her a glass of the red stuff and stuck a straw in it.

“Someone told me that love’s not supposed to hurt,” admitted Charlie. Her wrists were still fragile. She couldn’t bare to heal them fully. Healing them felt like admitting they had been broken.

“The Professor liked to say that love always hurts,” said Rhys. He cracked himself open a beer. “Love hurts because we love people — and people are ugly and complicated and do terrible things. Especially licks. But we can be better. Should be better,” he added bitterly. “He always said that Anarchs expected too little of themselves. Freedom, and that’s it. Not love or community or forgiveness, or any of that bullshit.”

Maybe there was a point there. Even if Monroe was full of shit, didn’t mean what he paid lip service to was full of shit. Charlie sucked at the straw—

—and immediately spat it across the bar and Rhys.

Rhys grabbed a bar rag and snickered.

The taste of saccharine rotten gravedirt spread across her tongue. Charlie hissed breath. “What the fuck is that?”

Still laughing, he took the glass back and slapped a pillow of blood on the bar. “Red corn syrup. Don’t trust people. Didn’t I just say we were ugly and complicated and do terrible things?”

He poured the blood into a new glass and Charlie gave it a questioning sniff. Even so, the harmless joke put a smile on her face. It was thin and stale and tasted like a lie — but it was a smile.

And he was right. That was the worst of it. Charlie hadn’t been vigilant. She had learned to live in the same careless inhumanity that others did. On her own, she had learned to kill, to assault humans and not think anything of it, to stand by while evil was done.

Maybe, from beyond the second grave, the Professor could still teach her something. The would-be foster sire that she never had.

_ Forgive him _ . One night, she could forgive Monroe. Tonight was not it. Jesse was on the hunt. When she burst into whatever meeting in Hollywood Monroe had with Ashley and Abrams, there was only one way that would go. Tonight, Charlie had to find a way to forgive herself for the person she had become.

Rhys poked her left hand. Pain blossomed down the tender hand bones and tendons. She snatched it back and glared.

“Heal it before you leave to do God knows what,” he said dryly. “And, whatever you do, don’t go after her. She’s not worth it.”

Charlie licked her lips. “I wasn’t going to,” she said, shamed of the answer.

“Good.”

She didn’t want his approval. But she had it. Somehow, she had to live with it. Somehow. Rhys’s hand lingered on his shoulder as he went back to his card game. And she was left alone. Healing didn’t hurt worse than the breaking, but, in a way, it was so much worse. The unnatural creaking and cracking, the twisted reforming as months of intensive damage repaired. And, the unavoidable fact that Jesse had badly hurt her. A human would’ve gone to the ER.

Charlie only hungered. 

But, in Medusa, she only had to drink the cold blood offered. Thick and stodgy, it went down unwell, but it satisfied like chugging a smoothie of ham sandwiches and cola would hold back hunger.

By the time she had finished, got her jacket, and headed out the door, she knew exactly where she had to go. The Professor was the first. But she was doing all she could to make amends. 

_ Amends to who? _ a part of her asked.  _ The universe? Your murderer? _

The part that remembered murder is wrong.

William E Smith. He was an sick bastard of a human but, as soon as she had extracted a confession, should’ve forced him to turn himself in. There were good ways to go about getting justice. Vigilante justice wasn’t it… was it?

Charlie knew the way and stopped in front of the familiar house. She and Jesse had dropped the body over a month ago. Almost two. Charlie had never kept up with any investigation. Who knew? Maybe the house was sold. Unrelated individuals lived there now, maybe the nice family that deserved a peaceful-looking family house. Two-point-four kids, a dog. A nice dog, like a golden retriever or a labradoodle.

Really, she should’ve gone combing the obituaries to find out more about Smith. 

Something told her not to. Something inside her knew before she knew. It knew where to be and knew that the place she needed to be was on the doorstep again.

Charlie knocked.

And knocked again.

It was late. The garage was shut, but there was no car in the drive. Maybe there was no one home. After all, it was pretty late.

Beyond the frosted glass door, movement stirred. The door pulled open. A ragged-looking older woman with blonde hair in a crooked bun and sweats rubbed her eyes. “Hello?”

“Hey, I was just wondering —” Charlie swallowed hard. “I just heard the news about Mr Smith. I live down the road.”

“Oh.” The woman pursed her lips and nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry. Did you know my father?”

“Yeah, I — Your father?” she repeated softly.

Father. Charlie looked again. The pale blonde hair, rhumey blue eyes, the same low cheekbones. The girls on the mantle. School photos. Victims, she had thought. He had confessed, when she had fucked his mind over so hard he addressed her as an angel. Daughter. 

The woman stepped aside and let Charlie in. The house had been mostly put away. Pictures taken off of blank walls. Furniture put on Craig’s List or moved out. The place felt empty, of wasted once-held memories.

“Do you want a drink?” the woman asked. 

Marsha, her name was. A nurse, but she had taken personal time. For grief. The hospital understood. Somehow, Charlie ended up standing in the kitchen, a cup of instant cocoa in her hands, with the daughter of man she had murdered.

Marsha poured herself a drink. Vodka, it smelled like. “How did you know my father?”

“Oh, just, around.” She gestured aimlessly with her up. “I mowed his lawn.”

She smiled sadly. “He used to talk about a neighbour girl who did some chores for him. Once Mom passed, he sort of… withdrew.”

Charlie tried to remember if Smith had been married. Did he wear a ring? She couldn’t remember. “He didn’t talk about her much.”

Marsha took a deep breath. “They took on the world together. School sweethearts. Met in — well, that school down the road, it used to be a joint middle-high school. Dad was sixteen, Mom fourteen. My brother was conceived just after he turned seventeen. A mistake and her parents didn’t approve of… you know. A Catholic.” Her smile curled into a grimace and her breath hitched. “But they made it through it. Married as soon as she graduated. Kept trying for another boy, but got four girls.”

That relationship couldn’t be good. Couldn’t be. No sophomore should be trolling middle school for a girlfriend. But. Fifty years later. Sixty. Five kids later. A lifetime of earnest memories.

“That’s amazing,” said Charlie. She resisted the urge to drink the cocoa. It burned her fingers like it knew. Judging her with Marsha’s unearned generosity. “And, he lived right by the same school?”

She grinned. “Yeah. They always needed parent volunteers, but parents all need to work these days, especially in LA. So, he volunteered three days a week. Used to, at least.” She nodded and bit her lip. “He started to… struggle, towards the end. My brother and I tried to get an in-house nurse or a home, but the waiting lists…” She took another drink and made herself smile. “He never thought he could do enough for those kids, especially the ones who couldn’t speak English. He learned Spanish a few years ago. He was so proud of that. Old dog, new tricks.”

Ariel. Protector of little children. Come to avenge for all the immigrant kids he couldn’t help.

Oh, fuck.

“How… How did he pass?” asked Charlie. Why did she ask that? She knew. 

Marsha took a heavy drink. She opened her mouth several times before tears wet her eyes and she shook her head. “I’m sorry — I—”

“No, it’s okay,” said Charlie desperately. 

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t.

She had drank his blood, left him chewed up and murdered in the living room.

Charlie remembered. Every time she had come here, she had felt the evil in the living room. The thick emotion of fear that clung to an aura so tightly it had become part of the house. She had thought it was victims. The screams hung in ghosts of memories. It was her. She had terrorized him. Broken into his house. Drank him. Stole his sanity, bit by bit, until he lost his grip on reality.

It was her.

Charlie lied. She hated lying, but it became a part of her. She lied and told Marsha that she used to come over every other weekend, drinking tea (“Oh, he loved tea.”). She worked a lot, so she couldn’t come so often, but elders are rad.  _ Elders are rad _ . The last sentence she ever thought she would say. He taught her so much.

She bullshitted until Marsha cried happy tears in memories of her father and Charlie managed to discreetly pour the cocoa down the drain. With too much drink, Charlie managed to direct Marsha back to the living room and let her collapse. 

There was nothing left in the room. Just a TV, on the floor, and a couch. No wooden crosses, lovingly polished and slowly falling to dust and disregard over the weeks. No rugs or doilies or pictures.

There was nothing for Charlie to do. No Rhys to bring into her fold. Marsha had a job she loved, a brother and sisters who needed her, a house and inheritance to deal with. No struggles she could help with. Nothing. Nothing.

She needed to learn from him. But she had said that about the Professor, about how Dustin had grieved for her. What would make this any different?

She had had no reason to kill him. Hunger? Pleasure? Why had it felt so good to hurt him? Because she thought he was a pedophile? Or because she had problems? Because someone had murdered her, stolen her life, and thrown her into a world of darkness?

Like the man at Long Beach. Why had it been so easy? Because he stabbed her? Did she really take that much satisfaction about killing someone who tried to defend himself? Especially since, now, there was no mark of the stabbing and he was still dead.

Charlie shut the door on the way out of the late William E Smith’s house. The night felt claustrophobic, the sky too low above her, glittering with a thousand shining eyes, the earth too far under her feet. Why… Why… Why…

What was she, to act like that? To treat people like that? Humans. When she went to UCLA, with Dustin and Meg and Rita and Carlos, would she torment and kill a pedophile? Would that be a forgettable Saturday night? That was only months ago. Where had the time gone?

Where had  _ she _ gone?

She was a shell. Hollow and empty. An empty husk carved by misfortune. An echo of inflicted evil. Somewhere, somehow, the mask had slipped off them both.

She and Jesse deserved each other.


	37. The Oracle

Monroe rarely knew peace. Rarely was there a minute where there was not fires to put out, or plans to put into action. A minute, merely, to relax. When the moment came, he wanted to spend it with Hawthorne, alone. He couldn’t turn off his phone and so he feared the interruption, when the rest of the waking world disturbed his private universe of peace, but it became hard to fear.

Hawthorne lingered in bed most evenings, even after he had showered and dressed. She curled in the sheet, her bare back to him. He had come back to the bedroom to make some comment about wasting their night. It died on his lips. The sheet exposed most of her back, the long curved line of her spine disappearing at the flare of her hips beneath the sheet.

She rolled onto her back, an aimless hand touseling her hair. “Must I actually put in  _ work _ to seduce you?”

“Not at all.” He sat on the edge of the bed and her hands found him.

Hawthorne wrinkled her nose as he kissed her. “You put on all the wrappings again,” she complained, tugging at his clothes. “You wake up next to a beautiful naked woman and the first thing you do is  _ get dressed _ ?”

“I am a very stupid man,” he murmured against her lips. Inevitably, he knew he would get called away, for some nonsense or another, but he loved thinking that maybe he wouldn’t. That the extent of his life, as it had been for so long, could be Hawthorne and his own bruised reputation to keep him company.

Monroe let her undress him again. With her in his arms, the rest of the cold world seemed to smile. Everything beyond their bedroom died off and let him be happy. It was so much better than he had ever thought, the resolution of their years.

When they had finished, she curled her body against his, snapping together like puzzle pieces. Her hair and scent brushed his nose. For the first time in a century and a half, Monroe could imagine the rest of his eternity without fear of the unknown.

“Stop it,” said Hawthorne.

Monroe glanced at her. His fingers trailed down smooth skin. “Stop what?”

“Stop… thinking whatever you’re thinking that makes you stiffen like that.”

He shrugged. “I was just thinking about us. Years change people. We would be idiots to think any promise of forever and love would mean anything.”

She nuzzled herself deeper against him. “What’s the alternative? Not bother with it at all?”

“No,” he said hurriedly. “I can’t ever ask you to love me like this always, but I can ask you to remember. Soon, your agoge will have you apprenticed to elder Ventrue for a time. It could be years before we see each other again. When we do, I will remember you and how we are tonight.”

Hawthorne’s finger drew circles through the hair on his chest. “Do you know what I was thinking about?”

“What?”

“How much I wish you had fucked me when I was a ghoul, so you could’ve fed on me. I bet that would’ve been amazing.” She chuckled blithely. 

Monroe had gone cold. “I could.”

“Could what?”

“I could drink from you. It’s only fair—”

“No,” she said. Her lip curled and she pulled away, standing. “Is it fair that I lived chained in hell for over two centuries and you take a step down into the pit on my behalf? How romantic.”

“I love you,” he started.

Hawthorne reached across the bed to pull him into a kiss. “And I love you, which is why I won’t let you do it. Not even once.”

“Audrey—”

She kissed him again and his arguments died unsaid. 

His phone rang.

She sauntered away with a sly smile, knowing how he stared as he reluctantly reached for his phone. And now he had to dress again.

“How’s life in the fast lane?” asked a familiar voice with a laugh.

It was Barty. Monroe steeled himself and put some excitement into his voice.

“Good as ever. How’s that crown? Getting tight yet?”

“Never. Hey, how’s it sound for us to get the families together again some time soon? You, me, the women, the kids? We could make a real night of it — skip elysium, just go to town, see a film, hunt, party.”

Monroe sat up and struggled to think of words. “Barty, I’m not really sure about coming back to the Valley so soon—”

“No, no, no,” said Barty with another laugh. “Don’t you come to me. I’m a swell guy, but I won’t host twice.  _ I’ll _ come to you. Treaty goes both ways, right? And it’s not like I’m gonna wear a crown.”

Hawthorne heard his half of the conversation and came back into the bedroom, eyebrows raised.

“That’s an even worse idea,” said Monroe.

“Come  _ on _ . Petra’s going on about some cemetery of a bunch of famous guys? And I want to see Hollywood and maybe a real Hollywood party would loosen you up.” He laughed, but it felt a little broken.

Monroe had gone to exactly one Hollywood party. Three years ago, when he had first met Ashley. It had gone about as well as he had expected. Ashley had attempted to seduce Dominate out of him for the first time. It was like fending off an octopus with fangs, through a haze of drunk and drugged blood.

“I’d love to show you around LA,” said Monroe stiffly, “but, there are Sabbat to consider. East LA has been overrun and I have intelligence that they are infiltrating Downtown. Soon, the Anarch baron there will want help.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Barty sternly. “When did you get the impression I want to hear about serious shit? Coordinate this with the archon. With me—”

“I’ll show you to Hollywood when it’s safe. Not a night sooner.”

“Spoilsport,” he grumbled.

Barty hung up and left Monroe staring, confused, at his phone.

Hawthorne had edged closer. “What happened?”

“That… was odd.” Not for the first time, Monroe considered that Barty was cleverer than he first seemed. Jan’s intelligence about Switzerland wasn’t extensive, not like it could be if he had kindred boots on the ground. Maybe, instead, the Tremere warlocks in Westside collaborated with Victoria Ash, acting on Barty’s behalf. Maybe their venomous public relations was all a ruse. Maybe the net was closing in.

All Monroe knew for certain was that his peace, for another night, had been well and truly shattered.

“Do you want some good news?” asked Hawthorne. She sat next to him.

His phone rang again. Justin. Great. “Yeah,” he said to Hawthorne. “Go on. I’m listening.”

“Well,” she said with a very pleased smile, “you’ll be proud to know I figured out my feeding… requirement. Most of the city knows Ashley Swan has run a very successful circulatory system. I struck an arrangement that benefitted me far more than him — though I still think he believes he’s getting a deal.”

Monroe stared. “What?” he breathed.

Justin continued, in that struck-dumb panic, but Monroe couldn’t hear any of it. 

“Don’t worry,” said Hawthorne. “This is something I worked out on my own. Actually, I’ve been meaning to tell you about Swan.”

“Call Orsay,” said Monroe hoarsely. “Have her meet me there. Tell her that explicitly. Say that I need her help in a matter of domain justice.”

Justin garbled, stammering incoherently. Monroe couldn’t soothe them now, though. He had work to do. Someone ripped the phone from him on Justin’s end. Charlie.

“I’ll do it,” said Charlie. Her fear was better disguised. “Just tell me how to get in touch with Orsay.”

Monroe gave her the number and hung up without a farewell. There was nothing else to say.

Hawthorne had continued, sounding immensely pleased with herself. Monroe couldn’t follow a word of it.

He knew. He knew he had to get up, get dressed, meet Orsay, arrange for her to do a ritual to determine manner of death, find who did it, extract justice, tell the domain, assure his childer that they were safe. Every step felt like an impossible marathon he had to run with broken legs.

“Zachary Grimes is dead,” said Monroe.

Hawthorne’s sudden sharp intake of breath brought him back. She had adored Zach. He had only come to LA because of her. Monroe knew he needed to hold it together, to be the port in her storm, but he had a long, impossible road ahead.

He did not know who fell into whose arms, but he never wanted to let go of her. There were no tears, no garbled words of disbelief or mourning. She understood, too.

Against his will, Monroe began to plan. He whispered it against her hair, breathing the scent of her until it saturated him. “Go to the others. Take Ritter and Dawson — the Raufoss pistols, too. Everything. Don’t let them leave that hotel. Help me protect them, promise them, calm them. They need…”

“I know,” she murmured. Her lips hung on his shoulder, soft and tense.

“I’m needed elsewhere.”

“I know.”

Monroe did not know who let go first. He stood, dressed, combed his hair. He took a gun, a stake. This could be a trap, a part of him said. He took the magical trinkets Ashley, and Ryuko, and Orsay had crafted for him, each unknowing of the other. He hoped tonight would not be the night to test them.

He did not know how he drove. He moved in a dream, lost in the fog of time.

The first time Monroe had met Zachary Grimes, it had been in Boston. Monroe always liked living in the suburbs by the nice schools. It was unclaimed domain and protected by virtue of the strong Masquerade. Zach’s sire had sought to reclaim his blood when he proved himself incompetent, and so Zach had fled to the hermit. He pled by the Ethic of Succor and Monroe was honourbound to give another Ventrue three days. Monroe had struck a bargain with the sire, that he could turn Zach into a childe worthy of his blood. The terrified fledgling who escaped certain death and had a horrible memory became a coldblooded snake.

But the snake remembered. Always, even when Monroe changed cities, he had called him. Caught up. Told him he missed him. As Zach rose in esteem in Boston, and then Toronto as the Sabbat crawled up the eastern coast, he promised he would vouch for Monroe. They would be together again. He didn’t forget what Monroe had did for him. He didn’t forget how Hawthorne had showed him mercy when Monroe, as his teacher, had none.

Coming to LA had been the thirty-year-old answer to their promises.

Monroe did not ever think he would stand over his ashes.

Orsay had asked something. He hadn’t noticed she had come. He must’ve spoken to her, discussed the ritual. She had already completed it. Candles and stones and water wet the gravel around the ashes. The ritual had finished, of course. Of course. He knew. Somehow, it was almost inconsequential who had killed Zach. The fact was the same. Zach was still dead. No vengeance would coalesce these ashes into the boy Monroe had sired and loved so dear.

“Do you need anything else, Captain Monroe?” asked Orsay again. Somewhere, they had come to an agreement, that she did not charge him. She  _ served _ him. Court magician. 

_ Prince of Los Angeles _ .

Monroe had never felt less like a prince of anything.

He stroked the edge of the sleeves. In the Camarilla, it could’ve been any young Ventrue. Ironed slacks, buttondown, wingtips. Soaked with fine ash and blackened bones — a wooden stake. In a desolate corner of Silver Lake, it could only be Zach.

He had been staked and left for dawn. Even executions weren’t as brutal. It was an agonizing death. No one deserved it. Especially not Zach, a better man and Ventrue than Monroe would ever be.

Monroe sighed and stood. “I need you to keep this to yourself. I will deal with things shortly.”

Orsay raised a hand. “Say no more.” She began to gather her components and placed them into a worn leather traveling case. “It is a terrible thing, to lose a childe.”

“It will be a terrible thing for her,” said Monroe. 

He fingered the ash-stained card that had been left on Zach’s chest. Singed. The Ace of Spades. Her calling card. She wanted him to know. Why? Was Harper genuinely that stupid? Monroe had thought — hoped, perhaps — that someone else took up the mantle, or tried to frame her. Orsay’s ritual confirmed Zach’s final hours. Staked by that woman. And alone, in pain, in fear, until dawn came crawling up his body. 

With a dip of a graceful bow, Orsay left Monroe alone with his thoughts. Another night, he might be perturbed by the stinging lack of feeling. There was no grief, no rage, no sadness. Only a vast and empty hole in his chest where Zachary Grimes had once lived.

Monroe had spent hours with Zach’s ashes, wondering why. Why. Why tonight? What changed? Harper had more rage than sense, but why. She had spent a decade killing once in a city and fleeing. It showed restraint, patience, dedication to a greater cause. Was this her message that she rejected any civilized way of kindred living and took to her old habits again? Had Monroe spared a vampire hunter, only to release her upon their kind?

She could be anywhere.

A screech of rubber on road stopped horrifyingly close behind him. The car jerked up the road and onto the gravel of the empty lot. The driver left it running as he flung the door open.

Monroe had a dread feeling who it was and he stood, ready to face Ashley Swan. Tonight was the night he had to use it. He had been dreading it since he had first considered it. Not his finest plan. Desperate, potentially hopeless. Dangerous. 

Ashley stormed across the gravel and punched Monroe. Hard enough to snap his head sideways and break a cheekbone. But just once. The barely contained rage and pain answered Monroe’s question at last. Why.

“Which one?” asked Monroe. The pair of words ached and he healed most of his face. He left a purple bruise, to soothe Ashley’s ego.

“It’s because of  _ you _ ,” snarled Ashley, but there was no fang behind it. Only a whimper. He spun on the spot, pacing like a trapped animal. “And I am so tired of this. The secrets and lies and turning allies into enemies. It’s time for you to take a leap of faith. If the next words out of your goddamned mouth aren’t truth, I will leave you. I will not do your dirty work. I will not let  _ any more _ of my childer die for you. I will not leave Zari to you. I will not be your ally or your tool. You will never see me again. Do not stall. Just answer my damn question. Who is your master?”

“Jan Pieterzoon,” said Monroe indifferently. “The Ventrue archon in the Valley.”

Ashley could not have been more horrified if he learned Monroe had been working for Hardestadt — which, truly, he supposed he did by proxy. He took several steps back. “Delilah died—”

“For nothing, just like Zach.” Monroe fished out the bottle Ashley had given him only a few nights ago. No bigger than flask, but made of clear glass. Blood floated in the air under the wax-sealed cork.

“You wanted to use it on us,” he said suspiciously. “Why?”

“Maybe you’re not the only one tired of the secrets and lies. Truth for truth. Question for question. Until we’re both satisfied.”

Ashley snatched the bottle and ran his nail along the wax. The cork popped out, the blood coiling with a life of its own. Slick, shining, a snake of flying blood. Ashley said something, a command to the spell. Both ends of the snake molded into fanged heads and found Monroe and Ashley’s clasped hands, wrapping around and lashing them tighter. The fangs descended, sinking through their wrists. Beady red eyes looked up at Monroe.

“You might regret this,” said Ashley dryly. “Oracles hurt like motherfuckers. When you lose this game and lie, it’ll bury its head into you. It’ll be looking for your heart, to kill you.”

“I won’t lie.” The snake blinked. Monroe swallowed. “You get the first question.”

Ashley spat. “Why do you serve Jan Pieterzoon?”

“He acquired a lifeboon over me. Who are you loyal to?”

“Myself and my own.” Ashley glanced to the snake, fearful of the lie. It was only part-truth. “Why did Jan Pieterzoon give you that Euro ghoul?”

“After LAX, he wanted a closer eye kept on me. Why did you Embrace your childer?”

“Because they had shit human lives and I could help. Why did you bond me?”

“Because I don’t trust you, but you are very effective. I acquire people whose investment will pay dividends.”

He sneered. “That might be the most repulsively Ventrue thing I’ve ever heard. What—”

“My turn,” said Monroe, and he thought a moment. “Do you dream of killing me?”

“Yes,” said Ashley without hesitation. “What do you hope to get from this?”

“Your trust. Mutual understanding. Have you ever conspired against me with Abrams or my enemies?”

Ashley had to think a minute on that one. “No. Who are you bribing with that black tar?”

“A landlord, to secure a safehouse. Where do you hang your hat?”

Ashley listed a half dozen addresses that Monroe committed to memory. Most in Hollywood, but at least one in the hills, another even in Downtown. “Where is this safehouse?”

Monroe answered freely. It nestled in a crummy part of Los Feliz that the world forgot. “What are you two greatest fears?”

Ashley eyed the oracle again. “My first is that I will turn out like my sire. My second is… that I already am. Who is your sire?”

“Alastair Fowler, San Francisco’s last Ventrue Primogen before the Anarch Revolts. He died in them. What Generation are you?”

Ashley seemed relieved at the question. “Toreador don’t keep track like you people, but I suspect Eighth. How long have you and the archon conspired to make you Prince of Los Angeles?”

Monroe hesitated. Ashley made the title a slur. “Longer than I’ve known. Jan wanted to make me Prince of New York, years ago.”

“Would you take it if he offered it?”

Monroe didn’t even bother to argue over turns anymore. “Yes. Wouldn’t you?”

“Never.” He smiled arrogantly, proud of his supposed Anarch virtue. Somehow, it managed to grind shame into Monroe. “Why did you let Azalea and everyone else whip you?”

“I told you,” he said, but he repeated himself for the oracle. They neared part of Monroe’s plan with the truth spell. “Because the most important thing to me is my people. It is my only duty to ensure they are safe and prosperous. And I failed them. I earned the punishment.”

“Bullshit,” said Ashley, but fear marked his voice. Tight in the lashed body of the snake, his hand clenched Monroe’s harder. Sharp black nails pierced his skin.

“This snake is your magic,” said Monroe calmly.

“Ventrue bullshit.”

“Not to me.”

With Ashley’s spare hand, he slicked his hair down again. Monroe waited patiently for him to digest the words. He needed to come to accept the truths in his own time. 

Uncertainty marked Ashley’s voice when he spoke again. “Why’d you come to LA? To be prince?”

Technically, it was two questions, but he wasn’t about to quibble. They were answers Ashley needed. Answers Monroe needed to give under oath. “No. I came because I was being framed in Baltimore for the murders of the prince and his childer, to whom I owed a lifeboon.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“What did the prince save you from?” asked Ashley, desperate to find Monroe was the snake he knew him to be.

“Himself. Justin frenzied in public, killed and drank two humans in a crowded bar. The prince wanted to execute us both. I exchanged myself to save us. He kept me a time, before a rival slew him.”

The truth didn’t seem to reassure Ashley any. He cursed under his breath. “Who else have you blood bonded?”

“No kindred, but I’ve fed blood to the ghouls Anton Ritter and Harry Dawson.” Monroe considered his next question. “Where do you come from, as a human?”

“Marietta.”

“Where—”

“My turn,” said Ashley sharply. “What is your feeding requirement, as a Ventrue?”

“Orphans. I drink adults only.” Ashley was hiding something and Monroe long suspected he knew what it was. He felt himself close the noose. “How many know you are blood bonded to your sire?” he asked softly.

Ashley’s hand jerked in his, but the lash of the oracle held them tight. He took a step backward, but Monroe followed him.

“I won’t say her name aloud, out of respect for your position,” added Monroe. “But, I must say, I’ve had the displeasure.”

Ashley bared his fangs, but there was no anger. Only fear. A predator cowering, neck exposed. “How—” The snake quivered, ready to strike into his skin. “No one,” he said sharply, his voice shaking with a low tremor. “No knows it’s her. Zari and others suspect, I’m sure, that I’m blood bound to someone. How do you know?”

“There are only so many elder Toreadors in the deep south who could’ve sired you. She’s from Atlanta, in the New World, at least.” Monroe inclined his head. “You do a decent job with your accent.”

Ashley nodded, still staring. All the confidence drained out of him and he looked like he’d like to do nothing more than hide in a hole, but the snake barely let him turn side-face. He tried and failed to gather himself. “You met her,” he said to himself. “When?”

“When I go the Valley court to treat with the prince, an old friend of mine,” said Monroe. “I’m sure you’ve heard. She’s his seneschal. When did you leave her?”

Ashley jerked a shrug and didn’t bother hiding his accent any longer. The low roundness hung at the edge of his voice. “Sometime after the Great War. Why does it matter? I spent twenty, twenty-five years in New Orleans. Came to LA. Took a new identity.” He tried to smile but it curdled on his lips.

Monroe couldn’t help but feel bad for him. He hadn’t expected the forced empathy to go both ways. In the twisted forced handshake, his thumb stroked Ashley’s knuckle.

“I didn’t have the gall to leave my sire, even… even when he treated me poorly,” said Monroe. “It was brave to leave her.”

“It wasn’t balls. It was shame.” He raised a curious eyebrow. “What’d your daddy do? Stop you from buying your second yacht?”

“Bonded me,” he said, but it wasn’t enough for the oracle. It was never enough. One by one, it came out, the curt words hanging heavy in the unfeeling air. “Cursed me. Hit me. Dominated me into hurting myself. Pulled my fangs. Cut my fingers off. Used me as a tool. Terrorized me with Presence. Stole my wealth and accomplishments for himself.”

When Monroe glanced back at him, Ashley’s gaze was heavy and hollow and unreadable.

“And you stayed.”

“I stayed.”

Ashley spoke to his shoes, barely above a whisper. “I stayed too long, too.” He sighed and found himself again. “Why did you continue to bond me if you knew it wasn’t taking?”

“Because I knew you would continue to act like you were bonded. Artificial loyalty, by deception or bond, is what I needed.” Monroe wanted to keep asking about Victoria Ash, but he knew he had pushed hard enough. They both had. “What did Orsay charge you for learning Vicissitude?”

He smiled, but his eyes were still lost in memories. “She ‘blood bonded’ me. Three nights. She still thinks I’m hers.”

Monroe grimaced. “I know you probably think that was quite clever, but Orsay won’t appreciate learning she’s been cheated.”

“Well, then, don’t tell her.” Ashley summoned up whatever he had left to smirk. “What’re  _ your _ two greatest fears?”

He winced as he realised the answer he had to give. “Failing my people and being unworthy of their admiration and love.” It drew his eye to the pile of ash and bones and clothes at their feet. “Where was Delilah?”

“An alley. In West Hollywood.” Ashley licked his lips and took a deep breath. “Who killed her?”

“Jesse Harper. Can you trust me?”

He hesitated. That hesitation was all Monroe wanted to gain from this. The victory had been expensive, though, in more ways than he had anticipated.

“I don’t know,” said Ashley, surprising them both. “Why did she do it?”

It was Monroe’s turn to hesitate. He hadn’t known until Ashley turned up, also with a dead childe. Every other secret, Monroe was happy to give away. He was confident in how they could secure Ashley’s loyalty. Except for that. 

“I don’t know, but I suspect she found out that we destroyed the Society’s chapter and you kept them ghouled. Would you betray me to your sire?”

Something haunted Ashley’s eyes and Monroe knew he could keep going at Victoria Ash all night and find out more. “I wouldn’t plan to, but the blood bond isn’t rational. It’s chemical. Why does a random Lasombra lick care about the Society?”

Regrettably, Monroe took the calling card out of his pocket. “A Lasombra, some years back, Embraced the Ace of Spades. Garica kept her on a leash. I won her loyalty by killing him — and lost it, now, because she learned what we did.”

Ashley smirked, but it sat tense. “Bet  _ you _ thought that was quite clever. Did Harper appreciate learning she was being used? I guess fucking not.” Grief twisted his voice. “You should’ve killed her.”

It wasn’t a question, but Monroe answered it. “Yes.”

“Let me eviscerate her,” he said. It wasn’t a request, but an oath.

“Together,” said Monroe before he realised the word had left him.

“What happened to ‘protect my people’?” asked Ashley with a satisfied smirk. “Lasombra only count when they have a gang of rabid Sabbat?”

“I am too old to lie to myself any longer and call it honour. I’m a product of my years,” he said. There was no point denying it to him here. “Zach Grimes and Delilah Swan are not Reaper Number Four. Perhaps I never had any honour. If that makes me selfish, or cruel, or unjust, or a villain or hypocrite, so be it. I can bare that and whatever they may call me. I know what I am. I sleep peacefully.” 

Monroe lowered their joined hands and stepped closer. The oracles were more an insurance than threat. He cradled Ashley’s face with his spare hand. Behind the dark sunglasses, he was close enough to see the uncertainty in those eyes. The surprise of something unanticipated, unexpected, but needed all the same. Azalea on her knees, a whip thrust in her hands. 

“I have a plan. Trust me, brother. She won’t get away with it.”

“Brother?” said Ashley, laughing. “You must’ve been an only child.”

“What else are we?” he asked in a low unsmiling whisper. “When I want something, I take it. I protect who and what I claim as mine. You once said you have no honour. I claimed mine was the most important thing. We were both lying then. We are not so different, you and me. And now we have a job to do. Help me.”

Ashley’s gaze dropped to the silent snakes, digging deep in their flesh and tasting the blood for lies. There were none. Spoken, the truth hurt more than any magic. When he looked back up, his eyes were dark and hooded, and he nodded slightly.

And Monroe knew he had him.

And, maybe, a far worse prospect, Ashley had him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting towards the end, where chapters are getting shorter. Sorry about that. Things are moving faster now.


	38. Ugly Storm

Jack knew where he shouldn’t be at a time like this, but he couldn’t stop himself from going back to the Last Round. He  _ should _ be back in Silver Lake, nesting in a tree outside Dustin’s, or… hunting. And not hunting dinner.

Harper had broken ranks. Monroe told Jack on the down-low that a bounty was on her head. She had killed Delilah Swan and Zachary Grimes. Left him for dawn, diablerized her. Jack understood that twisted pain behind Monroe’s eyes — better than most. It was personal. 

And, now, it was political.

The Garcia girls were dead. Same way. Staked and left with dawn with a stupid little card on their chests. Nines and Downtown hadn’t so much as extended a pinky to help them, but that didn’t stop the outrage. Salvador Garcia, nevermind how he ended, was an OG. Blame went out to Monroe, of course, but no one lick could claim any baron or prince or captain was responsible when the Ace of Spades came to town.

After all, she had been killing vampires ten years.

No one needed to know that most of Switzerland had been sharing drinks with her for the last months. 

For two murders, there would be no mercy. Five? It would be a party. And Jesse Harper had never been Little Miss Popular. 

But if she was on the rampage, there was no telling who was next. Three months living among them, who knew how long in LA in total — anyone could be a target. And no one knew the Ace of Spades was a Lasombra. Everyone thought she was human.

There were even worse things to think about. What if she found the Sabbat? What if the Sabbat found  _ her?  _ What if the FBI got their claws into her? Harper was best off a productive member of civilized vampire society — or dead. 

Jack dared to walk into Last Round with a face most people knew. Glares and globs of spit followed him. Those who didn’t meet his smile with hostility were too scared to take notice of him. All the Downtown licks crowded into the dive bar. Not a human to be seen. Fangs snapped as loners and gangs bumped into each other. Jumpy. Anxious.

And, nowhere to be seen, but everywhere to be felt — Nines. Nines will fix it. Nines will kill her. Nines offered those girls a place, on Garcia’s behalf, and they stuck with the cape. Maybe Monroe’s working with the hunter. Nines already has a lead. Out by Compton — I heard UCLA — nah, dove into Tower lands. Ain’t our problem anymore. If a hunter wants to start killing princes, they got their pick. What about Nines? Nines is tough as nails. Just watch. He’ll be the last one standing, again. MacNeil, all over again, swear it.

Jack snorted as the name came up a hundred ways. MacNeil, born again. Second MacNeil. Jeremy MacNeil — just gotta pick out who’s gonna play Don Sebastian.

Jack put a hand on the railing, just to stick a head around the corner to Cloud Nine. Just a minute, to see if there was a certain redhead.

Instead, he saw Nines, coming down.

They stopped.

Jack froze. Nines smiled like a blue-eyed shark in flannel.

“Come home, boy?” asked Nines. “We’ve all been waiting for you. Before it’s too late.”

The words broke Jack from his stupor. He had said them to Damsel. She had managed to convince Nines to stand down and not attack Chinatown, but he also knew Jack had been needling her.

He jerked his head back to where Downtown talked bullshit about MacNeil. “You some kinda messiah now?”

“I never said a word,” said Nines with a stiff brow. “What people say about me, I don’t give a fuck.”

“You don’t discourage it.”

He cocked his head and the unblinking smile curled. It disgusted Jack and he struggled against the delicate, so-subtle Presence. It made so much damned sense. Nines never got into fights the way other Anarchs did. He was a walking Presence beacon, worse than any Toreador or Ventrue. Jack didn’t even know if Monroe  _ knew _ Presence.

“I think my girl made it damn clear you ain’t welcome here if you’re bringing Monroe with you,” said Nines softly.

“You don’t speak for Damsel,” said Jack.

His brow arched. “Really? Don’t I? Because—”

“When the fuck did you start calling yourself ‘baron’?” he burst. “MacNeil  _ hated _ that word.  _ You _ hated that word.”

“Since we needed one,” said Nines, like it was just that simple. “The Anarchs of LA need a leader, if not, we’re gonna fall behind. A Tower will try to tame us — Vaughn, LaCroix, Monroe. If it helps, we took a vote.”

“A vote,” snarled Jack. “A vote all of people who can only live in your Downtown so long as they got your say-so.”

Nines leaned against the wall. It really said something to Jack that he didn’t even attempt to defend himself to Jack anymore. Jack remembered, as a fledgling Skelter brought home like a lost puppy, the way Nines would painstakingly explain everything until it made a framework for a universe that he was the unquestionable center of. It was all deliberate.

Jack scoffed. “Whatever, man.”

Nines called after him. Damsel must’ve been upstairs, too, listening. He needed to look the stoic rejected hero for her. Jack didn’t care anymore. Not about that asshole. There were a whole lotta people he was gonna get killed. There was no point crying over them anymore. There was only so much room in Jack for worry about others. At some point, he needed to just close the door. And walk away.

He sought shelter from the feelings on black wings. Chinatown wasn’t far off. Jack felt pretty confident about his ability to get the hell out of dodge, if push came to shove. Besides, the Red Dragon wasn’t  _ deep _ into Chinatown. More the edge.

Dustin was already there, waiting under a red awning. Despite the kiss, they were friends. Good friends. The best. Only one of them needed to eat, but Jack still relished their time at restaurants.

Jack watched Dustin from a perch on a lamppost, counting. Dustin whirled, knowing he was being watched but not knowing who or where. When he spotted the crow, he tried to ignore it. It took fourteen and a half minutes.

“Jack?” asked Dustin tentatively. He looked around to see if anyone spotted him talking to a crow. “That you?”

Jack cawed and dropped into the spotlight on legs. “Maybe.”

Dustin, who had jerked back in shock, breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re late.”

“Nope. Right on time. Not my fault you didn’t recognise me.” Jack opened the door. “How was class?”

“Oh, thank mercy,” gasped the man behind the counter in Mandarin. It was Wong Ho, the restaurant’s manager and patriarch. He had a worn browned face with growing grey roots. He looked like he hadn’t slept in ages. “You… you are like them, aren’t you?”

Jack started. He turned around but, at this hour, the restaurant was empty aside from the three of them. “I don’t know.”

“I remember you, when I was a boy, working with my father,” said Wong. He wrung his hands. “You haven’t aged a day — forty years, almost. It’s none of my business, I supposed. You tipped well.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Dustin quietly.

“It’s still none of your business,” said Jack pointedly in Mandarin. If they had been dealing with organized crime, Wong should know the warning.

Wong nodded eagerly. “I know. I know. But, please. Kiki. My daughter. She’s been taken, by… creatures that look human, but aren’t. I don’t know if they are like you. I don’t need to know. But I need my daughter back.”

Jack cursed and pawed the back of his neck. “Dustin,” he said in English, “you should go home and stay there. I’ll call later. His daughter’s been taken.”

Dustin blanched. “Wh — What?”

“I’ll get her back,” he promised. He repeated the promise to Wong.

Wong composed himself. “Thank you, sir.  _ Thank you _ . I will owe you a deep debt.”

Jack flinched at the idea. “Don’t go talking about debts to creatures like me. You’ll get yourself into something you can’t get out of. What about these creatures?”

“Ah, I knew them as members of the Tong,” he said. “But… they were fast. I admit, I’ve had to bribe them, at times, to keep the Red Dragon afloat. Years, now, and the youngest.” He shook his head. “He must’ve been a teenager and looks the very same.”

Part of Jack wanted to take this horseshit to Nines, to Damsel, but he knew it wouldn’t get taken care of. Worse, it might get taken care of in a different way. Jack got what he needed out of Wong Ho and then ushered Dustin out of the restaurant.

“Chinatown’s not safe,” said Jack shortly. “And if you give me  _ any _ sort of bullshit about ‘helping’— ”

“I don’t have a deathwish,” said Dustin. Sweat glistened on his forehead. “Just, be careful. Get that girl home. And call me when you’re safe.”

“I will,” he promised.

Still reluctant, Dustin crawled back in his car and sped off. Jack took off as a bird, the most common form available to him. If no one knew what the fuck these Chinatown licks were, he couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t see through his weak Obfuscate. Then again, maybe they had obscure powers and Disciplines. They could be mages, fairies, demons, wraiths — anything.

The Tong used the Lotus Blossom, a local massage parlour, as a front. The hours were short and, glancing in, didn’t look like it saw much any legal business. Thing is, they looked and, more importantly, smelled like humans. The whole place did. Not even a tiny sniff of lick taint. Either Ming Xiao and friends didn’t smell anything special, or it really was just the Tong.

Betting on the latter, Jack found opposable thumbs and two legs and just walked right in. The receptionist, a bleary eyed older man, barely glanced at him. Jack turned invisible. The parlour was a prostitution front, a maze of red rooms and ostentatious plastic lattice work. Fluorescent lights crackled and flickered, full of dust and bugs. The human smell, in all its nuances, only intensified.

But there was a basement. No one had a basement in California. If they blatantly operated a brothel on the main floor, what did they have downstairs? Jack wasn’t feeling thrilled about Kiki’s prospects. 

The basement was full of rooms like upstairs, but these had padlocks. He also hadn’t spotted a back door on his way in. Getting her out was gonna be a nightmare. Jack started smashing padlocks. Lucky for him, the basement looked deserted. They opened into rooms of grimy bare floorboards and cracked drywall. Some had dirty mattresses on the floor or remnants of food. And blood.

And girls. Most naked, some with bikinis, two or three to a room. They hunched like baby birds, crying or lost in uneasy sleep. Jack groaned. He couldn’t just leave them. Damnit. One by one, he woke them up. They gasped or screamed until they saw him put a finger to his lips and heard those words.  _ I’m here to rescue you _ . Some hugged him, crying, blabbering in English, or Cantonese, or Mandarin.

A plan started cooking in the back of Jack’s head.

He asked them to gather, quiet, in the basement hallway until he got the rest of them. Terrified, they agreed. They crowded together, whispering as friends were reunited. Others tried to cover their modesty.

Jack smashed the last padlock and opened into a far nicer room. There was a bed with a brass frame, blue paint on the walls, IKEA artwork. Even a radio. It blasted some bubblegum pop. 

Kiki sat cross-legged on the bed in a long dress. She glared at him. “What?” she snapped.

“Um.” Jack blinked. “I’m… uh. I guess I’m here to rescue you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Alright, Prince Charming. Oh, I’m  _ so _ impressed. Like, you want me to thank you or something?”

Jack scratched the back of his head. “Kind of, yeah.”

Well. She hadn’t been hurt, at least.

“In your dreams, asshole.” She tossed her long black hair.

“Keep talking like that and I’m gonna leave your ass here,” snapped Jack. The threat had no fangs, but Kiki leapt up, eyes wide.

“No, no, no. Jeez, don’t be so sensitive. I’m sorry, okay?” she begged.

Grudgingly, Jack took her out into the hall and made a headcount. Twelve. Twelve girls. And there were more upstairs, working. Fucking hell. For the first time, Jack considered calling the cops for a vampire problem. If this was just the Tong, cops could take care of them. Then again, if there was even one of Ming Xiao’s type, it could turn into a massacre — and a Masquerade problem for Nines.

Jack didn’t need to be owing Nines.

“Here’s the plan,” said Jack. The girls listened eagerly. “Run like hell, out the front door. Stay in a group. There’s not many guys upstairs. I can take care of them.”

Like a loose rabbit, one of them bolted. Jack groaned. Not like that. The rest took after her, even Kiki fleeing. Great.

Jack made pace behind them and, like he expected, the men raised a confused alarm. Orders shouted back and forth and Jack heard the sound he hoped he wouldn’t. A gun cocked. It fired. The girls screamed. The bullet bit into the plastic lattice. Before Jack realised what he had done, he launched himself up the last several stairs on four paws, snarling and growling. The men cursed and screamed, confused, but they didn’t stand a chance against a bullet-proof cougar. Jack made quick work of them, lapping at the blood as he passed the carnage of corpses he left behind. He almost wished he had a voice to curse them out with.

It was their own fault — kidnapping girls, selling them, keeping them locked up like animals, trying to kill them when they escaped. They died like animals.

The bleary-eyed receptionist grabbed one of the girls as she struggled. Kiki turned back for her before Jack could pouce. She kicked the old man in the balls and wrenched the girl away, running, hand in hand, out the door and down the street.

Guess they didn’t really need Jack after all. What a girl.

The cougar nudged the door open but it was the raven who followed the girls as they splintered. A bunch got into a taxi. Others ran into neighbouring apartment buildings. Kiki still dragged the girl she had saved from the receptionist, down the high street, up and alley, and through the backdoor of the Red Dragon. They had all made it.

At least one, surely, would file a police report. And who had saved them? An unnamed Chinese man in a leather jacket who just vanished. It looked like he broke the padlocks by hand. And, then, craziest thing, a  _ cougar _ appeared out of nowhere and tore up the Tong. Maybe the receptionist had seen Jack transform.

Nines would know.

Fuck him. Jack knew what he would say. He would go on about unity in the face of adversity, of wanting to all work together on this. And when Jack lost his cool and started arguing, Nines would drop the act. It came back to Jack interfering with their business. Even if he was doing what Nines wanted anyways.

Whatever was in Chinatown, whether it was a pack of Sabbat, witches, fairies, or goblins, it scared them shitless. Something came in and had the balls and fangs to openly brush aside Nines like he was some toddler.

There was only one place Jack needed to be.

As per their latest agreement, Jack rang the front doorbell rather than creep on Dustin’s windowsill.

Feet thundered on the stairs and Dustin threw open the door, panting. “Are you alright?”

Jack nodded wearily. “Can I come in?”

He smiled. “Do you need permission?”

“Only when I’m trying to be polite.” Jack followed Dustin in and glanced around. “Your parents still up?”

“In bed. It’s just me.”

The house was cozy. Warm and clutteredt. It looked like humans lived in it. This late, it was mostly dark, filled with echoes of daily life. Shelves lined the living room, covered with framed photos of kids and families. A stack of magazines sat beside a well-worn recliner in front of the TV. An empty dog bed sat in the middle, with a rubber chew toy.

Jack sat in the dog bed, thinking. Dustin sat on the couch and watched him.

“Did you get his daughter?”

“She’s fine.” Jack nodded aimlessly. The dog had been through a lot, seen too much. Violence. It must’ve been Charlie’s dog, before. He took a deep breath. “A lot of humans are gonna get caught in the crossfire, for no reason, really. When licks fight, we need to feed more. When we’re stressed and pissed and scared, a lot of us look for… entertainment.”

Dustin rubbed his hands together. “Are you telling me we need to leave the city?”

“No,” said Jack unwillingly. It would be best, of course. It wasn’t selfishness that stopped him from letting Dustin go. It was understanding. This wasn’t his fight, his life. “But some parts of the city are gonna be more dangerous than others.”

“Chinatown?” he asked.

Jack nodded. He picked up the chew toy. A blue rubber bone. Even so, teeth gouged marks in it. “Chinatown. Can’t say how the Tower will treat humans, but the Valley. Westside.”

Once, Downtown had been the safest place for humans. Nines was mad picky about killing vessels and making ghouls. Now, it could be the most dangerous.

“The Sabbat,” added Jack with a sigh. “Downtown will be a mess. Silver Lake, Echo, Los Feliz, Hollywood — that should all be okay. I’m… sort of head of security.”

“Was Disneyland the Sabbat?” asked Dustin in a whisper. “They’re saying it was Al Qaeda.”

Jack bit his lip. “That was  _ us _ , actually. Me. Baron of Anaheim tried to kill us. We finished it before he could really start it.”

In the quiet, a grandfather clock ticked and Dustin sweated.

“You mentioned ghouls, once. Would I be safer—”

“Yes,” he said honestly. He couldn’t pick his eyes up from the floor. “But I would rather kill you myself than ghoul you. What we got, you and me, it’s temporary at best. You’re gonna graduate, work at the zoo, meet a man. Grow old, live, raise dogs or cats or children.”

“I’m sorry,” said Dustin softly.

“For what?”

“For you, not being able to have that life.”

Jack picked at the fluff on the dog bed for some time. He hadn’t expected that. “Thanks,” he muttered. He raised his voice and his head. “We all gotta pick the lives we wanna lead. You know better than most humans what life as a lick is like. Do you really want that?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I want you.”

“I killed eight men tonight,” said Jack. “They were running an illegal brothel, kidnapping girls and shit. I broke the girls out, changed to a two-hundred-pound cougar and shredded them like… BBQ pork.”

Dustin squirmed under his gaze. “They were doing bad stuff, sounds like. They probably deserved it.”

“Did they?” he asked quietly. “They deserved to rot in prison the rest of their lives. Maybe get shanked. Maybe get gunned down by a cop or another gang. Did they deserve me?”

“No.”

“No,” he agreed. “They didn’t. But I didn’t hesitate. I wasn’t hungry, but I was mad. And no one could stop me. You’re a good guy, Dustin, but if you want that human life, don’t invest yourself in someone like me.”

Dustin grimaced and hung his head. Jack stood, limbs leaden, and laid a hand on his shoulder. Dustin reached to interlock their fingers.

“I’ll protect you best I can,” said Jack. “I’ll do everything. We can be friends. We can kiss. Maybe I’ll bite you. But I want to be honest with you. Not every night is breaking into the zoo and petting lions. Sometimes, it’s ripping the throats out of bad guys or blowing up Disneyland. One hell of an ugly storm is coming and we might all be in the same boat, but it’s just a boat.”

“Is the boat, in this metaphor, the Titanic?” asked Dustin scathingly. The attitude didn’t hide his hunched shoulders or the crumble of his lips.

Jack felt the corners of a smile. “No. But we do got a captain and I hope he knows these waters.”

As he turned to leave, he felt Dustin’s indecision hang in the air. Ultimately, neither said another word and Jack turned out into the night. It was right to draw the line in the sand. Then again, a very wise Malkavian had once told Jack that lines in the sand meant nothing when the tide came in.

Jack was starting to hate these metaphors.


	39. Ducks and Cockroaches

Asylum was tainted for Zari, since watching the fight between Therese and Jeanette. She could barely step foot in the place. It still felt so surreal, so bizarre. Unfortunately, that meant when Jeanette wanted to play friends, she invited herself over to Zari’s apartment. It was how Zari ended up on the floor, a mess of printed out photos and articles, blocking out Westside’s first  _ Fifth Estate  _ on the coffee table, as Jeanette lounged on the couch.

Zari hated a quiet house. Jeanette was anything but quiet.

“What do you think of ducks?” she asked profoundly.

“Gonna be real, I don’t think of ducks very often.”

“Do you think they’re predators?”

Zari raised a single brow. “Don’t they eat, like, grass and shit?”

Jeanette twirled a blonde pigtail. “No. I think they eat bugs. Like swans. Makes them predators. Even tiny bugs have lives and are hunted.”

Zari prided herself on getting better at interpreting Jeanette’s stream of consciousness bullshit. “Is there a new duck in town?”

Jeanette laughed. “No, swanling. A bug. A cockroach — unliving, undying, rising from the ashes like a phoenix, but not nearly so pretty.”

“I don’t think ducks eat cockroaches,” said Zari.

Jeanette gnawed her lip, suddenly anxious. “That’s not any good, then. What good’s a duck if they can’t eat the caterpillars out of the garden?”

Zari rearranged the articles. She needed to crop the photo of Asylum. She would have to wait for Therese to come around before asking about that. Zari was picky, this time. Normally, she had free run. The zine had gotten her a power she never thought she could have, a certain status and respect that didn’t involve fighting or toughness. Not that she wasn’t tough. But this time, Zari needed to be careful about the articles. It was like writing for Big Brother, all above board, so if humans found it they could think it was just a weird local elite club or something. Events, announcements, reviews of the “restaurants” down in Marina del Rey.

“I think our duckie is in trouble,” admitted Jeanette in confidence.

“Is he?” asked Zari dryly. She dropped the article. “Is it wrong that, somehow, I knew you were talking about the prince? Also, let’s just gloss over that little pet name.”

“Ducks can’t eat cockroaches.”

“Well,” said Zari reasonably, “do cockroaches eat ducks?”

Jeanette gasped and jerked back. “Do they?” she whispered.

This was a bad night for her. Sometimes, it felt like Jeanette got a double dose of the Malkavian curse and Therese got zilch.

“No, they don’t. I’m sure the prince has lots of caterpillars to eat and there are… cats to eat cockroaches.”

Jeanette nodded sagely. “Kitty cats like  _ us _ , swanling.”

“I’m not really much of a swanling anymore.” Zari pursed her lips. “Not really much of anything, really.”

Jeanette crawled to sit on the floor next to her. Her dancing hand graced along the edges of Zari’s hair, her shoulders, before gripping her in a close hug. The familiarity of the friendly contact bit hard. How long had it been since Zari had been hugged by Nita or Velvet or…

Or Delilah.

Ashley had called, to tell her. Zari wish she hadn’t known.

Zari told herself there was no relation between the bad news and spontaneously filling her nights with interviews and writing and photography. Suddenly, there was no time to grieve, and Delilah became a sad distant memory.

Zari returned the hug, which only made Jeanette squeeze harder. Therese had been in control much more lately. Zari wondered how she hadn’t noticed the little things. Jeanette’s nails were often red, but now had a coat of sensible ivory. The nails brushed her face.

“You’re a rose,” said Jeanette sincerely. “And a fierce cat. Aphrodite herself.”

Zari couldn’t manage to stop herself from smiling.

Jeanette scampered back up on the couch and hummed dreamily. “We can catch the cockroach ourselves, kitty. You’ve already been told to.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked, thinking over what Therese said to her. “Does the cockroach have a name?”

Jeanette rolled over, to gauge Zari’s reaction. “Fiona.”

Zari gave no reaction other than a polite confusion. “Who?”

“The last mouse of Disneyland, escaped the atomic bombs of Ventrue rage and, like a cockroach, is the sole survivor,” said Jeanette in that dark voice that reminded her of Therese.

Zari shrugged. Fuck. How much did Jeanette really  _ know?  _ “What do you want to do with her?”

“Duckie wants to keep her,” she said, put out.

Even if Zari cut ties with Ashley, she could’ve owed it to Monroe to deliver her.

Fiona was nothing to her. Just the childe of a bastard who got what he deserved, finally.

In the right ways, she could be useful. Surely Monroe knew that. He would calm down, put it aside, and understand that Fiona really should thank  _ him _ for freeing her from Fortier’s blood bond. She could be more influence in Westside for him.

That was another thing. Zari knew Monroe as very mild-mannered. Where had that anger come from? Setting Disneyland on fire was about as melodramatic as things got.

“We almost have a full primogen,” said Zari instead. “Malkavian, Tremere, Toreador. She could be Ventrue. Don’t really need a Brujah, Nos, or Gangrel, do we? They’re not exactly high clans.”

“The last one was before your time, wasn’t it?” asked Jeanette. Maybe Therese. The voice clipped the ends of the words, dropping like icicles. “The prior Toreador Primogen?” Definitely Therese.

“Yes.”

“His name was Marcus Sutton,” said Therese calmly. Her voice sharpened and Jeanette’s smile vanished. “A Toreador with his head in the stars. Far too close to the prince. You understand how things go with those three clans — Brujah, Toreador, Ventrue. Like family, influencing each other in the worst possible ways. Toreador seduce. Brujah break. Ventrue control.”

“What happened to him?” asked Zari.

“Oh.” Jeanette turned to her with a salacious smile. “We killed him.”

“Oh.”

The expression shifted. “Don’t worry,” said Therese. “You will be a fine replacement for Sutton, in your own time. I told you before, rose, everyone needs to find their place in our world and respect the roles we play.”

“LaCroix appointed Sarita Amble,” said Zari hesitatingly.

“That will not be a problem.”

She stiffened and forced a returning smile. “It’s good to see you sisters getting along.”

Jeanette beamed like an old friend. “It’s great, huh? But don’t you worry. You’re not disturbing the peace any, unless we’re talking about the earthquakes you’re making with the fleet-footed god.”

Zari groaned. The tension melted like a candle and Jeanette giggled sensually. “That’s none of your business,” said Zari.

“He’s quite handsome,” said Jeanette. She stretched her long pale legs out again. “Are you willing to share?”

“No,” she snapped, too harshly.

Jeanette blinked, hurt and confused.

Zari sighed. “No. Mercurio’s got that tasty Ventrue blood in him. There’s only so much to go around and we can’t risk pissing off the prince.”

Jeanette laughed. “Oh, no worries. Duckie will just go out and get a new one.”

Go out and get another. Like milk gone bad, instead of a dead assistant. As soon as Zari thought of it, the image of Mercurio’s corpse consumed her. It filled her, brim to brim.

Zari looked back to Jeanette. Zari and Therese shared an understanding about business, the court, knowing how the world worked and finding places they fit in it. Jeanette acted friendly, but that didn’t make them friends.

“Please, don’t,” said Zari quietly. “Don’t hurt him.”

Jeanette softened. “Okay. Hermes is yours, Aphrodite.” She started to drift again, her hand twirling her pigtail faster like the blades of a helicopter. “I really don’t envy her. Poor girl. A storm is coming for her with blood and lies pouring from rainclouds of familiar faces.”

Zari grimaced. She had learned to tune out Jeanette’s prophetic moods. Mostly, she didn’t want to know what was going on in other Malkavians — or, worse, going on with her.

“Come here,” she said, standing from the coffee table and brushing off her knees. “It’s not the most thrilling work I’ve done, but you can read the mock-up now.”

Therese stood up, in Jeanette’s clothes and hair. “We need to leave, Miss Herald. His Highness will expect our presence when he meets with the refugee, Fiona Fortier.”

Zari’s eyes swept her. “Alright. Maybe we should stop by Asylum, get you some new clothes.”

Therese glanced down, but she didn’t seem to recognise she wore a mini-skirt that was barely thicker than a belt or a dress shirt that knotted above her belly button. “Why?”

Zari grabbed her jacket and followed Therese out. She wondered if LaCroix would give her shit for not shepherding the Malkavian. They slipped into a waiting car driven by a jerky ghoul. LaCroix’s tower wasn’t far off and Zari could only hope they beat Fiona there.

The penthouse office was just as bougie and gold-leaf as she remembered. LaCroix gave Therese a curious look.

Zari stepped in front of her before the prince could say anything. “Might I introduce Therese Voerman, Seneschal of Los Angeles.”

“Ah.” LaCroix lifted a stiff hand. “Madame Seneschal. Miss Herald. You may refresh yourselves in the powder room.”

With as much dignity as Therese could have on platform heels with her hair in pigtails, she stalked into the room and shut the door.

Zari raised an eyebrow at LaCroix, who placed his hands on the pristine glass-top desk.

“Do you think this is the first time the… change has come at an inopportune moment?” he asked coolly. “Therese Voerman is a brilliant woman, shackled to the embodiment of chaos, and in need of assistance. As prince, it is my duty and privilege to assist kindred of my realm.”

Zari didn’t think it would be a good idea to bring up what a crock of shit that was. If he had caught feelings, he could just be honest. She doubted he had a single altruistic bone in his starched, milquetoast body.

“So. Fiona Fortier,” said Zari.

LaCroix inclined his head. “A refugee from a man whom I believe you are very familiar with. Matthew Monroe.”

“I am, sir.”

“She and I share an origin.” LaCroix spoke to the pens on his desk. “A distasteful, self-indulgent, dishonourable sire. It is not for this, but an ancient Ventrue custom by which I offer succor. She has two more days in my protection. This meeting shall determine whether she shall be offered back to Monroe with a stake in her chest or I will show clemency.”

Zari folded her hands. “Fortier sired you?” she said quietly. It shouldn’t have hurt or even surprised her. Somehow, it still managed to do both.

LaCroix fixed her with eyes as blank and unfeeling as steel. “Yes, I believe I just said that. I do not appreciate having to repeat myself. Tell me, what would Fiona Fortier buy me with Monroe?”

She struggled to pull her mind from Fortier. “I am not sure.”

“Guess,” he ordered.

Zari didn’t have the faintest idea. Monroe was someone who lived to be three steps ahead of people, but she had never even considered him as an angry man. Did it blind him? Fuel him? Could he let it simmer, for years, decades? For its excessiveness, the assault on Anaheim had been nearly flawless. Except for Fiona. Perhaps, more for his ego than his anger, Fiona could be valuable.

“Quite a lot, I think,” she said. Zari took a deep breath. “I think he would more than likely be willing to negotiate for Fiona Fortier’s life.”

“Would he join me?” asked LaCroix. It was clear this was the only question worth answering. “Would he join his land with mine, under my crown, and help me bring peace to Los Angeles?”

Zari didn’t hesitate. “No, Your Highness. He wouldn’t. I knew him personally for almost four years and all he’s wanted, he now has. Independence. Power. Respect.”

LaCroix’s lip curled and he turned from his desk to the window of the city. The lights of Downtown hung like stars. “He is a Ventrue,” he said impatiently. “And young. The Camarilla still holds a place for him. Is he incapable of reason or perhaps he cannot understand the mercy I may show?”

“I don’t know, sir,” she said. “But I do know he would say the same thing to you.”

LaCroix rounded on her, hate in his eyes, but Therese emerged from the side room. As her typical self, she wore a stiff and steamed charcoal skirt suit, her hair strained into an impeccable bun, and squared off black glasses over understated professional makeup. She looked just as comfortable in the pigtails and clowny makeup.

Therese curtsied. “Apologies, Your Highness.”

LaCroix relaxed and offered a curt smile. “No matter. You are still early. Perhaps you have additional insight on Monroe.”

Therese adjusted her glasses. “I am afraid I may have little of additional worth. I met him only a handful of times when he first arrived in LA. He sought a place in Westside, which I was willing to give, but he and my sister did not get along.”

“Can’t imagine why,” said Zari.

Therese and her exchanged knowing smiles. “Truly, Jeanette can be a handful, for those without the patience or direction she requires.”

The intercom on the desk buzzed erratically. LaCroix stopped it with a press of a button. “Yes?”

It was Chuck, the night guard. “Uh, Mr LaCroix, you got another visitor. A Mrs—” A bout of static interrupted him. “ _ Ms _ Fort—” Another crackle of static. “Um. Ms Fiona.”

“Send her,” said the prince, taking his finger off the device.

LaCroix sunk into his chair, fingers steepled and lips tense. Therese took up a stoic position behind him. Zari reclined against a wall, arms crossed, but a glare from both of them and she joined them behind the desk. All this Camarilla pomp and bullshit.

Zari had only had the displeasure of meeting Louis Fortier the one time. He had swept into Jeremy MacNeil’s cafe in his cravat with his female childer, all dressed in glittering gowns and pearls. Nines ended up in a fist fight with Fortier, only being dragged off by Garcia. Almost everyone was a fair target for Fortier’s bullying. The glittery flock of childer didn’t endear her any to them as they scampered away from the fight.

The woman who came out of the elevator barely looked like them. She looked, instead, like a Ventrue. A jacket strained against her bosom and the pearls were a tight choker rather than the lengthy ropes. Her hair was short, stiff, and blonde, her eyes full of ice and a cold, measured fear. Low chunky heels clicked across the too-empty room.

“You stand before Sebastian LaCroix, Eighth of the Line of Tiamat, Prince of Los Angeles and Warden of Westside,” said Zari, her lonely voice rebounded off the lonely walls.

Fiona raised a plucked eyebrow to her. “We’re doing this?” she asked. She spoke through her fangs, nasal, almost lisping. 

Zari communicated as best she could with her eyes.  _ For the love of Christ, just address the prince _ . _ This hasn’t been Anarch land for too damn long. _

Fiona weighed her pride with her options. Pride lost. She dropped to a knee and hung her head. LaCroix sat back and considered her carefully, letting her stew in the heavy silence before standing and offering his broodmate his ring to kiss. Fiona made a small sound of disgust, but did. She tried to stand, but LaCroix pressed a hand to her shoulder.

“I never said you could leave the floor,” said LaCroix. There was no amusement, no enjoyment, only a simple cold statement.

Fiona stayed on her knees. She licked her lips and nodded. “Is this the game we’re playing?”

“It is a game,” he said charitably, “but not one that is played. I understand you must’ve come to quite the fright when Fortier met his grisly end. The blood bond has its power and its ways.” LaCroix circled her, hands clasped behind him, and Fiona’s eyes tracked him without turning her head. “Out of my not inconsiderable mercy, I am willing to permit a certain degree of leniency that I would not otherwise allow a Ventrue of your age. You were sired into Anarch lands, are unregistered by the Directorate, have never been set an agoge, and, most grotesquely, sired by Louis Fortier.”

“He wanted you to win,” said Fiona bitterly. “Can’t imagine why, now.”

LaCroix stopped in his tracks. “Ventrue often suffer a sense of delusion of the extent of their control. He believed an impulsive gift of eternal life entitled him to all I have done with my years.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

LaCroix stepped in front of her and grabbed Fiona by the chin, to force her to look at him. “My mercy is waning. Are you at all aware of where you stand and your purpose here, tonight?”

“I am deciding if I want to join you,” she said.

Zari couldn’t suppress her smirk. Pity was for street urchins and Akon’s newest album. It wasn’t for mouthy Ventrue. This was primetime reality entertainment. 

“ _ I _ am deciding if I will let you live when the Ethic runs dry,” said LaCroix.

“I will survive,” said Fiona blithely. “By one way or another.”

He released his grip on her and indicated with a finger she was to stand. He returned to sit at his desk, but he tsk’d her away from the available chair. Fiona stood with that unpleasant look on her face, like she smelled something foul.

Fiona’s eyes lingered on Zari. “Send my best wishes to Monroe,” she said.

LaCroix answered for her. “I am more likely to send him you in an urn,” he said. “You are young, vulnerable, untrained, and a liability. Letting you live in my domain might have Monroe set a target on me. Currently, my plans are to stake you in a closet until I decide. Convince me otherwise.”

Fiona leaned on the chair, her strong white fingers gripping the arms. She glanced to Zari, to Therese, to the silent Sheriff. “I’m a risk,” she said with a crooked smile. “You like risks. You like pissing off Ventrue who got the silver spoon Fortier never stuck in your mouth — like Monroe, like Vaughn.”

Zari wished she could see LaCroix’s face, but he only steepled his fingers again.

“Forgive me, Your Highness,” said Therese sharply. “How do you propose we trust you?”

“I don’t trust people,” said Fiona. She gave Therese another scathing look. “And you got bigger cracks in your mirror than your sister if  _ you _ do. I come to mutual agreements with people. For instance,  _ I _ want to live somewhere with a certain stretch of culture, of prestige, where I’m not grubbing on the floor for scraps. Where I’m respected.” Her voice sharpened to a razor edge, but she reigned it in. “So. What do you want? Your Highness? What agreement can we come to?”

“Do you know what a boon is, Fiona?” asked LaCroix. “A debt between kindred?”

She nodded. “Sure.”

“They are sacrosanct, the very base of our economy and a trust of reputation and honour. Do you agree?”

“Yes.”

“Minor. Major. Life.”

The way his voice lingered on the final one made his intentions clear.

Fiona straightened and scoffed. “I think I’ll take my chance—”

LaCroix raised a hand. The Sheriff produced a wooden knife from his belt and  _ threw _ . Zari had never seen anything like it. A staking, maybe, up close with a filed table leg. But a dagger like that? It spun, whistling, before it slammed into Fiona’s chest and struck home.

She collapsed.

LaCroix crossed the floor. There was not a sound. He crouched low and tilted Fiona’s frozen face to stare up at him.

“You are right,” he said softly. “I can offer you a place, with me, sister. Ventrue princes don’t oft have primogen, but I could make you mine. A member of court, no higher ranking Ventrue other than myself, a first among equals in the primogen council. For this place, I expect loyalty. Unquestionable.” He gripped the knife stabbed in her chest and twisted. The body didn’t move. “I could offer you as an olive branch to Monroe before I cross the Rubicon. Your death would mean nothing to me, yet would make him quite content. I am saving your life. For this, you owe me it. Eternally.”

LaCroix wrenched out the knife, slick with vitae. Fiona gasped and attempted to roll over. Breath hissed through her fangs with a whimper. He stood, watching her impassively. The knife clattered on the floor. She made no attempt to escape, but didn’t raise her eyes from the slick buffed tiles either.

“Miss Herald,” called LaCroix.

Zari started. “Yes, Your Highness?”

“Make a note. Fiona owes me a lifeboon. At next elysium, make it known I saved her from Anaheim.”

Zari hadn’t brought her boon ledger, but she would remember. “Of course, sir.”

Perhaps some pity could be reserved for Fiona. Not much, but maybe a little. Even cockroaches had bad days and, sometimes, ducks got to eat them for breakfast.

If only the damn woman had just bowed.


	40. Atonement

Charlie didn’t know where to find Jesse. The woman didn’t answer her phone. She was a ghost, haunting the alleys of LA. A shadow. No one had seen or heard from her in nights. Licks stayed close together. None walked alone. Word said that Jesse was the newest victim of the Ace of Spades. Good riddance, everyone said.

Charlie vibrated with rage. It was easy to be angry. She did her best to stuff it down, but her best wasn’t great. When the anger began to melt, the guilt kicked in. 

Red knitted in a chair by the window. Lloyd kicked back on the bed, boots and legs high against the wall, tunelessly humming with tinny hissing headphones in. Justin paced. Charlie seethed.

There was a very obvious gaping hole in their group. Two, in fact. Monroe, who spent every waking hour with Hawthorne at Medusa. And Grimes.

It was a drumbeat. No, not drums. More delicate. Fingers on a guitar, strumming. Eight legs plucking the strings of the Cobweb, each footfall echoing.  _ Your fault. Your fault. Your fault. _

Justin picked up a magazine, still left on a bedside table. Real estate, a number of pages dog-eared, entries highlighted.

“Throw it out,” said Red aimlessly.

Justin just gaped at her. “How—”

“It’s for your benefit. His memory isn’t stored in a magazine. And you barely knew the man.”

Justin kept a hold on it as he turned to sit. “I could’ve. We would’ve.”

Red returned her attention to the scarf. Zig-zag stripes of blue and golden yellow. “If you want to mourn your maybes, you will spend eternity in the funeral home, boy.”

Charlie felt her heart ache as Justin’s face fell.

“I need to go see Monroe,” said Charlie in a broken voice.

As soon as she stood, Justin leapt to his feet. His fingers rolled the magazine, keeping it close. “I’ll come with you.”

“Alone.”

“It’s not safe out there!” he burst.

Lloyd raised his head, disinterested, but lapsed back into his thoughts.

“The Ace of Spades does not hunt more than once in a city before moving on,” said Red calmly. “The hysteria will pass soon. She’s already left. The city is no more dangerous than it was two weeks ago.”

Charlie hoped Red was wrong. It wasn’t Jesse. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

“But, she dropped  _ five _ bodies,” said Justin, holding up a hand as if Red had forgotten how to count. “You wanna tell me what kinda hunter can kill a Toreador, in the middle of Hollywood, three Brujah with a fucking armed guard of gangsters, and… and Grimes, right under Monroe’s nose?”

“A very smart one,” said Red dryly. “Smart enough to leave when she’s had enough. Go, Charlie. I suspect Monroe is still at Medusa.”

Charlie nodded her thanks and slammed the door close behind her. The night felt lonelier than it had in months. She checked her phone as she headed down to the street. The call log had only one number called for ages. Jesse. Charlie called it again.

It rang.

Jesse had set down the mantle. She didn’t hunt anymore. She was starting to live.

It rang.

So stupid. Charlie had told Jesse about the Society. A stupid, stupid flash of mistrust with Monroe and it was Grimes who paid for it.

It rang.

Jesse could be in danger. She didn’t kill the Garcia girls. They were innocent in all this. So was Grimes. So was Ashley’s girl. They weren’t a part of this.

_ Click _ .

Charlie lurched to talk, but it only spun into the answering machine. No customized message, only a dial tone and automatic computerized voice. Charlie didn’t leave a message.

She got into her car and she drove. There was nowhere to go, but the lull of the road, the flash of street lights on the dark interior, it put her in a better state of mind. The anger melted. And she found guilt. Shame. Eight legs dancing across the webs of the city. Everyone knew. It was written on her forehead. Impulsive. Traitor. Evil. Guilty.

Guilty, proclaimed by a court and sentenced. Sentenced to eternity. Never had Charlie thought immortality was a sweet deal, but the weight of it settled heavy and hard like a stone.

When Charlie stopped, she was in a lot off the beaten track. Warehouses lined the street, eighteen-wheelers empty and ready to be loaded in the morning. Homeless navigated the quiet and the dark. Charlie parked crooked in the lifeless part of Los Angeles. She took the Raufoss pistol out of the glove compartment. And she called again.

Ring. Ring. Ring.  _ Click _ .  _ “Please leave your message at the sound of the tone _ .”

“Come get me, you bitch,” Charlie snarled. She glanced at the street corners and repeated them.

Jesse materialized from the shadows at her feet, rising from the dark like being lifted by an elevator from beneath a puddle of ink. The ground was street, rock solid.

Jesse smirked. “You think I take the bus?”

Charlie jerked backwards. Jesse followed. She didn’t look like she had a weapon, but that meant nothing. Suddenly, Charlie could remember every time the shadows jumped around Jesse, when they became as solid and hard as steel, flexible as rubber, sharp as knives, strong as a truck.

She was afraid. She had always been afraid.

“You’ve been following me,” accused Charlie.

Jesse nodded. “I suppose I should thank you, but vampires don’t know gratitude.”

Jesse took a step forward and Charlie didn’t realise she backed away until Jesse smirked again.

“What’re you thanking me for?”

“Showing me I was always right.” Her eyes blackened, lid to lid. The night itself seemed to darken. “Vampires don’t know any other way.”

Charlie shook her head. “No. No, you — Don’t start this again. Don’t hide behind that. We were  _ good _ . We, just, aren’t in good places for each other.”

“Vampires can’t love.”

“That’s not true.”

“You never loved me. And I never loved you.”

It was what Jesse had convinced herself of, to avoid the mourning of maybes. It allowed her to bury it. And it broke what was left of Charlie’s heart.

“You gotta know that’s not true,” she whispered.

Jesse trembled. Charlie felt a slumbering instinct to take her in her arms, to wipe away her tears, hold her until dawn came. She crushed it. 

Jesse stiffened herself and smiled sadly. “You’re right. But so am I.”

A shadow smacked Charlie’s ass, making her stumble, but another reached dexterously to pull—

Charlie groaned.

It pulled the Raufoss pistol from the belt of her jeans. Jesse caught it and inspected the gun.

“This is your secret agent gun, isn’t it?” asked Jesse, knowing the answer. “Stole it from me to kill the Professor. Any reason you brought it to meet me?”

“Because I hoped the so-called Ace of Spades right now is just some other human,” said Charlie hoarsely. “I hoped it wasn’t true.”

Jesse snorted. “Liar. You brought it to kill me.”

“Zachary Grimes was born in Boston,” said Charlie. Tears burned behind her eyes. “He served in the Korean War, came home and went to Harvard Law, having enough of violence and war. He took on cases for free. He wanted to make a difference. A vampire liked the look of him and got him involved in forging identities, white collar crime. Grimes started drinking. Got divorced, so his wife would never know.”

“Stop it.”

“One night, the vampire turned him, locked him in the basement, and started training him,” continued Charlie. “A whole mess of bullshit, trying to learn  _ thousands _ of years of history and culture, while accepting you’ve now become a member of the undead. His sire tried to kill him but he busted out. A Nos pointed him towards Monroe, a hermit on the edge—”

“ _ Shut up _ ,” said Jesse. The Dominate was too scattered to take hold.

“I learned this in less than a month of knowing the guy,” said Charlie desperately. “Go talk to Blake and the other Swans. Find out who you killed. These were  _ people _ , Jess. Who has to pay for this?”

“Everyone!” roared Jesse.

She counted them off. “Ashley’s gotta lose his kids, one by one, when they’ve done literally fuck all. Gotta wipe Garcia off the map. And Monroe — you know what? I’m here.” She spread her arms wide. “Go on. I’m another one of them, aren’t I?”

“Stop it,” she snapped.

Charlie stepped into the gun. The hard metal ground against her t-shirt, her ribs. She put her hands on it, over Jesse’s. “What?” she asked softly. “You gonna kill Grimes, and Red, and Lloyd, and Justin — and leave me? This isn’t you.”

Jesse swallowed. Her hands loosened their grip on the gun. “It is.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” Charlie put a hand on her face, stroking her cheek. “It’s okay. You can — You can make amends. It’s alright. You, Monroe, Ashley, we can talk it down. It’s not too late. You made a mistake, like Azalea. We can still forgive. Please.”

_ Forgive him. _

Jesse lifted her hand to take Charlie’s. Their fingers twined and a ragged cold breath passed through them. Jesse’s eyes shone and, slowly, so slowly, she shook her head and dropped her hand.

“No,” said Charlie softly. “Please.”

“I will never forgive them,” said Jesse in a broken voice. “I never had anything and — they took the only friends I ever had.”

“Jess,” she warned, “Monroe’s got the domain locked tight. You’re never getting out.”

“I’m not done yet.” She threw away Charlie’s hand and stuffed the Raufoss pistol in her belt. “You can live,” she spat. “If I get through all their kids and toys, you can be the last one standing.”

“So you did,” said Charlie, disbelieving. She knew but she hadn’t thought she’d hear it. The confirmation was so much worse. “You killed Grimes and the others.”

“Yes,” said Jesse savagely. “I killed them — and I would again. That cruel mewling bitch holding Cesare’s chain got what she deserved. She moaned like a porn star when I got my fangs in her. Fuck, she tasted good. She turned to bones in my hands.”

Charlie shook her head. She felt trapped in her body, a silent tomb for the horror.

“That yuppie bastard begged and cried when he saw it coming,” said Jesse. “Did you know he preyed on…” She lost her sadistic gusto when she heard the end of her sentence.

“Widowers,” said Charlie. Tears spilled cool and bloody down her face. “Because of his wife. His sire killed her before he turned him.” She scrubbed at the tears. “Monroe and I worked  _ so hard _ to get the Garcia girls to live her, safely. Downtown was gonna let them die in East LA with the Sabbat. That was a good thing we did,” she said desperately. Her head ached, from the inside out. “One of the only goddamned good things I have done.”

“I didn’t kill them,” said Jesse haltingly.

Charlie snorted and snot ran up her nose. “You expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t kill children.”

“Whatever they look like, Miranda and Lorenza were, like, at least forty,” she said. She tried to summon the heat to yell at her, but Jesse’s cruelty and harshness left her cold. Had it always been there, under the surface, hiding in her past, waiting to come back? “What was your plan, then? Keep killing everyone Ashley and Monroe like until they kill you?”

“I’d get to them eventually,” said Jesse with a shrug. She took a couple steps back as Charlie kept crying, but her face softened. When she drew breath, it jerked. “I’m tired, Charlie,” she confessed. “I’m so tired. My life ended the night my brother died. I’ve never belonged anywhere, really.”

Charlie sniffled. “You belonged here. With me.”

Jesse tried to smile, but it came a grimace. “Did I?”

“No,” she said. She wiped her new tears and struggled for a breath. “But you could. You could change. I could go to Monroe. He’ll listen to me, he’ll let you live. No one knows you’re the Ace. Things could go on. You could find peace. You  _ could _ change. It’s not too late.” The last words hovered on her lips, but Charlie couldn’t say them.  _ I could forgive you. _ She didn’t know if she could, but she couldn’t stand by and let more people die. Not anymore.

Jesse shook her head. The shadows seemed to lighten, flicker, confused. “How can you believe that?”

“Because I have to,” said Charlie guiltily. “Because my life ended when Rhys turned me and… I’m evil. I can be, I know it, but I don’t have to be. I can be better. I used to be human.”

Jesse rubbed away tears with the flat of her hand. “I don’t know if I can.”

Charlie risked closing the distance between them. Jesse started, but Charlie couldn’t hold her, couldn’t help her. She felt Grimes’ ghost, Justin’s grief between them in a shadow of guilt and fear. “Can you try, for me?” she begged. “Trust me. I’m not gonna let anyone else die over this. We’re gonna end it.”

Slowly, Jesse started to nod. Sobs heaved her chest, but she held herself steady. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Charlie risked a smile. “Okay, then. When I’m done with Monroe, I’ll give you a call.”

Jesse grimaced. “I threw my phone out, but I’m hiding out in Los Feliz.” She described a tangle of alleys on the edge of the domain. “It’s got a view of Griffith Park.” She smiled.

Clearly, they didn’t have the same memories of their adventure in the park. Charlie felt her own smile die. No. She knew the answer. She wouldn’t forgive her. But Jesse was still a person and Charlie swore no more. No more death. Not one more.

Not even Jesse.

“You go wait there, then,” said Charlie. “I’ll come find you later.”

Jesse hesitated, looking for a hug, but Charlie wouldn’t give it. She turned back to her car and didn’t give Jesse another look. This wasn’t personal. It was ethical. Charlie could’ve killed the Ace of Spades, settled her and Jesse’s complicated relationship, got Justin and Lloyd’s accolades. Monroe would’ve been so proud. And Charlie knew she could do it. But she wouldn’t.

Medusa felt like a ghost town. On the stone, her sneakers fell heavy. The tables and chairs had been put back together in a semblance of order. TVs still hung on the walls, too many for a restaurant. Flowers smelled sweet like a funeral home.

Monroe sat at a large central table with Rubio and Hawthorne. They all looked ragged. Stress wore them thin, conversation muted and dark. Monroe stood when he spotted her.

“Are you alright, Charlie?” he asked. “Did something happen?”

Rubio snorted. “I’m sure all your kids are getting antsy under lockdown. Come on, have a drink.”

Charlie couldn’t take her eyes off Monroe. He felt different. “I need to talk to you.”

He took her by the arm and directed them both into a back office. It was painted yellow-ish off-white and, despite being new, already felt outdated. The chair and computer were secondhand, the filing cabinet dented. Monroe sat. Charlie shut the door and crossed her arms.

The chair creaked as he swayed and she tried to find the words.

“I know what you’re going to say,” said Monroe heavily. “The answer is no.”

Charlie shut her eyes and gathered herself. When she opened them and looked at him, she knew it was hopeless. He had made his decision. “Please.”

He leaned forward. “I want you to look me in the eye and tell me exactly what you want.”

“I want Jesse—”

“No, no,” he interrupted her coldly. “Say what she is, what she did.”

Charlie took a deep breath. “I want the Ace of Spades, who killed Grimes and Delilah and the Garcias, to be spared.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What universe would I allow that person to live?”

“Be the bigger person, please,” she begged. She hated how her voice trembled.

He laughed, cold and harsh. “No. I’m not after any moral high ground.”

“Well, I am,” she snapped.

Monroe stood and straightened his shirt, though it had not been wrinkled. “Then, content yourself that you tried and you failed. A villain stopped you.”

Charlie grabbed him by his shirt and pushed him back in the chair. “I’m not done yet!” she shouted. He just gave her that infuriatingly calm look, like she was throwing an irreverent tantrum. “Killing her won’t bring anyone back — just like killing Azalea wouldn’t bring back Jeff. I don’t know how to tell you to care about people —  _ people _ . Jesse is your people, just like Azalea. How can you kill one and let the other stay? That’s not fair.”

There was something dark and ugly in his expression. “Are you finished?” he asked. 

She nodded, wincing at the tone. 

“I don’t want you to think I came to this decision lightly. I also do understand the… implications, but I am content. Some things are more important than my honour.” He shrugged. “If it had just been the Garcias, I might’ve understood. Harper had history with Salvador, as did I, and eliminating them, while messy and rash, would’ve warranted a slap on the wrist.” The chair creaked and his lips tensed. “But it was not just the Garcias.”

“Killing her won’t bring back Zachary Grimes,” said Charlie in a small voice.

The name brought Monroe to his feet. Charlie stood her ground, but barred him from the door. He cocked his head. “Killing Garcia didn’t erase Bella’s memories of her imprisonment or return Aisha to humanity. Killing Fortier didn’t raise Blue Moon from the ashes or erase his attempt on your life. But some things cannot be left unanswered. Now, move.”

“No.” 

“I’ve made my decision.”

“No,” she shouted again. 

She fisted his shirt and Monroe grabbed her wrist, firmly. He didn’t hurt her or say a word. He only looked at her, his eyes deep blue and unfathomable, like depths of oceans where sea monsters lurked. Somehow, it was worse. She wished he had hurt her.

“I never asked you to go hunt Fortier like fucking Bin Laden,” she said.

His face twisted and, for the first time since Jan’s safehouse, she saw genuine emotion in Monroe. She didn’t like it. “In case you haven’t noticed,” he snapped, “we can’t quite ask Zach what he wants. My honour did not save him. I did not protect him—”

“Jesse thinks the same about the Society,” said Charlie desperately, “that her friends’ abuse and… torment… and, whatever Ashley did to them — that it needs to be answered. At least Grimes and the others only died.”

Monroe’s grip on her tightened.

She was not afraid.

“Yes,” he said blankly. “Yes, I suppose we ought thank the vampire hunter for only killing us. I let her live. I will take the blame. I will weather your anger at failing to protect you, but do not —  _ do not _ belittle Zach’s death. Zachary Grimes paid for my mistake with his life. I never should’ve let the Ace of Spades live. Now, I must correct it, before she does more damage.”

“I—”

“Think,” he commanded. “For one moment, just think. Harper has spent months living among vampires, learning where we live, where we socialize, having free reign through our society. That degree of intelligence, as well as personal interaction, has garnered her a hit-list and map to go along with her ability. It’s a miracle you aren’t at the top of it.”

“Did you really give Jesse names to go kill and feed on?” burst Charlie.

Confused, Monroe pulled back, but a flicker of recognition passed through his face.

“Son of a bitch,” she whispered. “You did.”

“I pacified her, knowing that if she was let free,  _ anyone _ could fall dead next,” said Monroe irritably. “So, yes, I gave her a few names to tide her over and offered her the opportunity for me to provide her blood.  _ She _ had the choice to feed and kill kindred and she took it.”

Charlie didn’t know what to believe. Jesse had killed five kindred in the last two weeks. Was it that hard to believe that, before living among them, she’d casually have killed Rubio or Charlie?

“You don’t get to make that trade-off,” she said, shaking her head. The tremors in her voice spread to the rest of her. “You don’t get to play God like that.”

“Says who?” he whispered. 

It sent a chill through her. “What’s gotten into you?”

Monroe grimaced. “End of discussion, then.”

“No, I’m not done yet.”

“Really?” he asked coolly. “What do you have to say that, you think, could change my mind?”

Charlie floundered, hopeless, through the vastness of the English language. She thought over everything she had learned about Monroe, about Jesse, about the harsh and cold relationships she shared with both of them. She pictured Justin’s horror-stricken face when they had found Grimes’ car at the edge of Silver Lake, and his ashes. The faint, whispery plea in Monroe’s voice when they told him. How it crystalized into anger, liable to shatter.

There was nothing.

“Please,” she said again.

Monroe stiffened. “I’m sorry, but I won’t spare her to appease your virtues. If someone killed you, I would hunt them to the ends of the earth and beyond. It would be the last thing I do.”

“That’s not noble. It’s selfish.”

He didn’t listen. Gently but firmly, he moved her out of the way and opened the door. She stood, feeling cold and old and mute and helpless, in the office. Maybe Jesse deserved to die, but she didn’t get to make that call. Even Monroe didn’t. No one did.

Charlie reached for her phone before she realised Jesse had thrown hers away. With the wards around the domain, there was no way out. Maybe Orsay could electrocute them, like a fence, or catch her like a spider’s web. The borders were closed.

Monroe didn’t understand. He couldn’t, she knew that now. Like a bull, once he started he wouldn’t stop.

Would Orsay? No, probably not. Too mercenary. Too loyal. Charlie would need to explain why Jesse could get caught in the borders, what she had done to get on Monroe’s bad side.

She needed someone who knew something about magic. Someone who wouldn’t ask questions for the right price. Maybe, someone who understood she had loved Jesse. The name came to Charlie written, rather than thought. She didn’t dare think it. She had never gotten his number, not daring to pollute her phone with it. But she had an idea how to find him.

Hollywood was the answer. Most went into hiding, but a safe bet was probably a nightclub. Charlie only went to the one. Zari had mentioned it once. Pandemonium. She wasn’t about to go crawling up and down the strip, but one. Just one. If he wasn’t there, it wasn’t meant to be.

Something told her she would find him there.

Rap blasted until the lyrics wrote themselves on the side of her skull. The press of humans was tight enough to taste, a noxious gas of perfume, cologne, sweat, liquor, and blood. Glitter flashed in the alternating pulse of flashing lights and almost darkness. Lasers bounced like waves. Couples grinded and danced too close. The chaos filtered around her, too celebratory, too joyful. Charlie felt like the only sober and sane person in the world.

She found a security guy, a big guy who could’ve been a wrestler, crammed into an all-black suit.

“Excuse me!” she shouted over the music. “Is there, like… a VIP room or something?”

He took a look at her jeans and lack of cleavage, makeup, or glitter. Charlie had Dominated her way in and it was starting to show.

“Teeth,” he grunted.

Charlie glanced around and gave a quick flash of her fangs. Definitely in the right place.

The guy pointed up the spiral staircase in the corner. “Have fun, miss.”

Slowly, Charlie made her way up the stairs, second guessing every step. This wasn’t her place. It was too claustrophobic, too loud, too exposed. It wasn’t her. She could go back. Go back to Justin and Red and Lloyd, wait for Monroe to find Jesse and rip her head off. And everything would go back to normal.

Normal.

The VIP floor sprawled along leather couches and tables. Wallpapered in red was the Toreador thorned rose. A bar glowed at the back wall, but this wasn’t really a place people came for cocktails. Charlie averted her eyes delicately. It was where vampires came to feed and have fun, though it looked a lot more sexual than any feeding Charlie had done. Long toned limbs almost shimmered in the dim blue light, the music quieted and softened by moans, and the sweet smell of blood and Presence a miasma thick on the air.

“Finally taking me up on that offer?” asked a dreadfully familiar voice.

Charlie hesitated before turning to face it. Ashley Swan sat in a chair by the stairway. She must’ve passed him, blinded by the bizarre sight. He, at least, didn’t have any three-quarter naked human sprawled on his lap.

Ashley smiled. “Don’t look like that. You’re in a nightclub, not prison. Come, sit.”

He brushed a dozing human to the end of a couch and offered her a seat. Tentatively, she took it. Her fingers gnarled into knots in her lap.

“What offer?” she asked, speaking to their shoes. Her sneakers were dirty, the white caps almost grey, the laces knotted in uneven bows. He wore boots, toes pointed, and covered in a silvery glitter.

“Well, the offer I made you the first night we met,” said Ashley with that grating ironic smile in his voice. “To foster you.”

It was funny. Should’ve been funny. She should’ve laughed. Of course —  _ of course —  _ Monroe was a far more trustworthy and reasonable sire. Despite being a vampire, he was a good man. Compared to Ashley. She’d be stupid to think otherwise. She didn’t say that, though. 

“I think I’m better off on my own, thanks,” she said.

“Ah, they grow up so fast.” He put an arm around the back of the couch, but didn’t touch her. “What do you need, Charlie?”

The use of her name felt so personal. It made her feel seen and she knew she came to the right place.

“Maybe I came to say hi,” she said. She risked looking at him. He didn’t look any different. Sunglasses rested on a crown of silvery-gold hair, turned blue by the dim light.

Ashley laughed. “You can, but you didn’t.” He glanced down the stairs. “We can go down to the basement and… work, if the club’s making you uncomfortable.”

Charlie realised why he thought she had come and it was her turn to laugh. “No, no, no, I’m fine with that. Maybe I’ll come for tattoos one night.”

“I’m a terrible artist,” he confessed with a wink. “You’ll be walking around with stick figures.”

She shrugged. “Eh, it’s not too late to take classes.”

Her words brought her up short and the air thickened with something more sinister than Presence. Ashley sat up. 

“What are you here for?” asked Ashley in a very different voice. “Are you here by Monroe or yourself?”

“Just me.”

“Well, I’m not going to play Twenty Questions, so you might as well just spit it out before I rip it out of you.”

Charlie took a deep breath. “I need you to get Jesse Harper out of the city.”

Ashley stiffened. He retracted the arm he had draped behind her and inspected her closely. She held her ground as those eyes analyzed her. “Why?”

“Because it’s not safe here,” said Charlie. “The Ace of Spades is hunting and—”

“I know who she is,” said Ashley shortly. “Don’t even attempt to lie to me. You’ll just piss me off and I’ve had a rough week.”

Charlie grimaced and stood. That was it. Her last chance. Now, all she could try to do was smuggle Jesse herself. Monroe would catch her, of course, and that would probably be it. What would he do, if she insisted on standing in his way? Was this the hill she wanted them to die on?

“Hold up,” called Ashley after her. “I didn’t say no.”

She turned back, struck by hope and disgust. “You… You would help me get the woman who killed your childe out of the city… for the right price?”

Ashley crossed a leg and smirked. “Well, when you put it like that, maybe I shouldn’t help you.”

She sat next to him again. “No, no, please. What’s your price? What do you want?”

“Tell me why you want to save her,” he said. “I’m curious. Is it something as insipid as love?”

“No,” she said softly. “It’s not love. But, too many people have died over this. It needs to stop, for all of us to just bury the hatchet and move on with our lives. There is no justice in this world, only picking up the pieces and starting again.”

“The only place Monroe will bury a hatchet is in Harper’s skull.”

Charlie bit her lip. “I know.”

“You would betray him,” he said heavily, “for your naive sense of nobility.”

“And you would if the price was right,” she snapped.

Ashley smiled sweetly and ignored her words. “Hmm. I think you’re lying. You’re some twenty-year-old brat. Children aren’t so noble. You’re trying to assuage your own guilt and atone for your own sins by doing one right thing. If you’re capable of mercy and goodness every few decades, who cares how many mewling cattle die on your fangs?”

Charlie shirked from the accusation. If it had come from Monroe, she would’ve denied it. Furiously. There was almost approval in his voice, though. A knowledge of what they were, how they lived. It wasn’t pretty. Neither were they. “Something wrong with that?”

“No.” He scoffed. “I just understand that a lot better than some vain idea of morals. I’ll get your torrid wretched lesbian lover out of Los Angeles, but what do you have to give me?”

“What do you want?” she asked, scared of the answer.

He reached out a hand and didn’t quite touch her hair, tracing the edge of a wayward curl. It sent a frightened shiver down her spine. He looked at her like a beloved portrait.

“I did quite a good job on that,” he said to himself. “You never thanked me.”

“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “Now, about Jesse—”

“Do you know what boons are?” asked Ashley. When she nodded, he continued, “Tell me what you know.”

“Boons are… favours,” she said. “Vampires trade them like currency. They’re backed by reputation and the understanding that everyone might need help one night. Minor boons are casual, common. Major require danger and spilling blood.” She nodded, resigned. “I know I’ll owe you a major, to work against Monroe like this.”

A smile crawled across his face. “What  _ would _ you give me? How much does this mean to you?”

“Anything, everything,” she said faintly. “Fuck, if you want a lifeboon, you can—”

“Don’t finish that offer or I’ll be tempted.”

Charlie swallowed her words.

Ashley sighed. “I’ll take two majors. One, to work against Monroe and put myself in his crosshairs. A second, for the danger of attempting to get Harper out of the city. Fair?”

She nodded.

“This is business, fledgling, use your words,” he said irritably, sounding peculiarly like Monroe for a moment.

“Yes,” said Charlie. “Yes, that’s fair. I’ll owe you two major boons to get Jesse Harper out of the city.”

Ashley offered his hand, to shake. Going behind Monroe’s back made her feel like a leper, but she didn’t know what else to do. At least Ashley would get compensated for it. If Monroe ever found out, let alone found out that Charlie owed Ashley not one but  _ two _ major boons, she would be hung out to dry.

Charlie shook on it.

“Good,” said Ashley. He smiled. “Now, where is she?”


	41. The Roads We Walk

Monroe felt like he knew a lot. Sometimes, more than others. Sometimes, even, he felt like he knew what would happen as it happened. But that was not knowing. It was lucky guesses, borne of personal knowledge and weighing probability.

This, he knew.

His domain would not know peace until Jesse Harper was dead.

_ He _ would not know peace. And neither would Zach.

His people isolated themselves, hiding in gangs and coteries and broods, for fear of the Ace of Spades. Life had been put on hold. When he had Harper, he could tell people the truth. The Ace of Spades was a vampire — but she would trouble them no more. Push come to shove, he was sure he could Dominate her into cooperating. Dominate was a sledgehammer as well as a scalpel. He would take pleasure breaking her.

The Hollowmen were the only kindred, it seemed, who had no fear of the hunter. Monroe was not surprised. He spent much and more of his time with Rubio at Medusa, waiting and thinking and planning impatiently. After Charlie’s expected breakout, he delegated Ritter and Hawthorne to watch them. The change of company was even nice.

Azalea was the only one who came consistently, sometimes with Elena Flores, other times with Silas or Erik Morgan. Never with more than one at a time, as though to not present a threat against him. Tonight, she had come alone.

“You still carry remnants of your clan’s worship into your independence,” said Azalea to Rubio, as the topic returned, as it always did, to faith.

Rubio gestured with his beer to Monroe. “All clans leave their mark. The Ministry is no different.”

Monroe sighed and drank. “I’d love to argue that, but I don’t think I can.”

Rubio smiled. “Besides, I’m not exactly using Typhus Brew to sacrifice on the dark moon. I sell it — fifteen bucks a pint, normally. About as disgraceful as I can get to the clan priests.”

“You’ve taken the rituals and beliefs you were reared in and molded them to suit you, rather than let them mold you to suit them,” said Azalea in that solemn hard voice she had.

Rubio sat back. “Most people will find I don’t… mold easily.”

“Most people who escape their clans have similar feelings,” said Monroe. “I imagine LA was much different, before all these neonates were sired into the Free State.”

“San Diego was,” said Azalea simply. “I will never say we all got along, but there was that shared history, in our diversity. We all had escaped something and sought to build a better future.”

Her words weighed on him. They gathered his recent failures like magnets and he smiled bitterly. “A better future,” he echoed.

“We’ll find the Ace,” said Rubio.

“I never asked, but I don’t suppose either of you have… tracking spells or any some such?” asked Monroe lightly.

Azalea’s smile had no humour. “I’m afraid not.”

“We can at least pickle ourselves until our Final Nights,” said Rubio. He indicated their empty drinks and stood. “Another round?”

Azalea and Monroe agreed and he took off into his backroom. Rubio could get lost in there. He spent hours fawning over his beloved collection. Expanding his repertoire to include spirits only gave him more to browse.

Azalea, much like most ancillae, made for an easy quiet. Monroe felt no need to fill their silence with banter and prattle. He did not relax, per se, but the majority of his guard was saved for the front and side doors, which he kept a close eye on.

“Are the paths completely absent among the Camarilla?” asked Azalea suddenly.

Monroe started. “Yes. I believe it was a condition of its founding, that all Camarilla kindred were required to stay on the Path of Humanity.”

“That doesn’t mean all its members adhere to the rules,” she said with a wry smile.

“They do, regardless.”

She sniffed. “You must’ve all led very charmed existences.”

The idea was so ludacris, Monroe chuckled. “Couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Among the Sabbat,” said Azalea haltingly, “it is known that, inevitably, the Path of Humanity fails us. As Cainites, it no longer fits our world. We or others will land ourselves in situations where human mores and virtues fail. Thou shalt not kill, steal, lie — even feed. Sires understand this as well as the consequences of staying on a failing path. Do you?”

Monroe felt like he knew where this went. He eyed the hallway Rubio had gone down, but it was dark and showed no signs of his return. “The Beast wins,” he answered. “The kindred becomes a wight. Speak plainly, please.”

She arched a brow. “Plainly? I admire you, in many ways, and don’t understand why or how you can allow yourself to continue when the Path of Humanity fails our leaders worst of all.”

Monroe almost answered with scathing impulse, but the words died in his mouth. Had it failed him? It had been a long time since Monroe had heard or felt his Beast. He ascribed it to his position. Ventrue and their Beasts thrived best when in power and in control. The thought of being in harmony with the savage cruel Beast sat unwell with him. But it was a dilemma for another night.

“Maybe I am never meant to understand it,” said Azalea. “In which case, I apologize for my forwardness, but I know I, if I wore your shoes, would be miserable.”

“Miserable,” he repeated the word with a quirk of a smile. “I am stressed, but miserable might be pushing it.”

“Of my pack, Silas walks the Path of the Feral Heart. Erik hopes to turn onto it soon. While, Orsay has managed to retain herself on the Road of Humanity by isolation.” Her voice turned bitter. “A choice, though not ideal.” 

That he hadn’t known. Had he and Jan been on better terms of late, Monroe would’ve asked him for a dossier on the paths. “And I take it Elena is also on your path?”

She smiled. “Path of Honourable Accord. I am a good sire. I had her on it in her first nights.”

Monroe repeated the path name to himself again. What sort of sire was he? With her centuries as a ghoul, Hawthorne knew little of this life. The thought of failing her pained him. How cold the world had proven to be, just when things looked like they might’ve been improving. Part of Monroe wanted to hear Azalea go on, with interest. A far larger part of him was fearful he would hear something that resonated with him.

He drank the last drops from his beer. “The three Towers. Courage, Honour, Duty.”

“Honour comes first,” said Azalea, surprised. “I never asked. How did you know about my path?”

“Ages ago,” said Monroe heavily, “Clan Ventrue created the Road of Kings — Via Regalis — from which…” He squinted as he struggled to remember his agoge, so long ago now. “The Paths of… Chivalry, the Tyrant… the Merchant, and Via Consuasor come from it. Modern nights, it’s the Path of Honourable Accord.”

“Path of the Vizier,” she translated, “or the Adviser.”

He raised a finger. “That’s it. Vizier. Well, supposedly, Ventru set down the laws of the road in Enoch. It’s a… whole thing. New childer are taught clan history.”

Azalea smiled thinly. “Lasombra childer learn history, too, but I would be hard pressed to remember the paths from the Road of Night.”

“You would if you had my sire,” he promised. He thought a moment. Ventrue believed whole heartedly in knowing thine enemy. “Via Calidi Noctis, Via Gelu Noctis, Via Illuminus Noctis, and… Path of Allied Night,” he added as the Latin failed him.

He caught her eye and they both laughed. Hers was a nice sound, elegant and charming.

“I don’t mean to pry,” she said. “It’s not my business, but I can’t help but notice you have lost your way on the Path of Humanity. I wanted to make my services known.”

“I haven’t ‘lost my way’.” Monroe glanced at her, irritated. Once he found her deep dark eyes, he couldn’t look away. His defense felt so flimsy and childish. And unnecessary, between them.

“The night we met,” she said, “when those policemen appeared. You did not permit us to feast, after a long and difficult battle and journey, out of mercy for those human men. Would you still let them live?”

Monroe did not like the conclusions his silence drew. Nothing had changed, except for him. They would still be men, still innocents. Azalea was not right, but he could not honestly say she was wrong.

“Humans are a fine resource and not to be spent hastily,” she continued. She reached a hand toward him, slender fingers adorned with rings of silver and onyx. “But, at the end of it all, humans do not shed tears for their cattle. Neither should we.”

“I don’t,” he said honestly. “Not for a long time. I avoid killing, not out of distaste or outrage but…” He searched for the word. “Disinterest.”

Azalea seemingly agreed and had nothing to say about it. Monroe, once he started thinking, couldn’t stop.

“When I was human, I was good,” he said to himself. “ _ Very _ good. I was a captain in the military and my men were my life. Several were older than me, but they still came to me like the others with their problems and worries. They… They loved me. And I was a good influence on them. In the Camarilla, too. When I first encountered the failings of Clan Ventrue, I wanted to stay and reform it.” He sniffed without humour.

“Failings?” she asked.

Monroe had to smile at the idea of a Lasombra asking a Ventrue so innocently about his clan’s failings. “The stifling oligarchy, egotistical rampant abuse, and petty dishonourable rivalries while our honest purpose — to lead the Camarilla and Caine’s kind — was forgotten.”

“What made you think it was beyond reformation, then?”

“Marlene Irvine,” said Monroe solidly. “A Toreador harpy in Atlanta. A silly little girl, no threat at all. Fun, flirty, scarce a thought in her head — I’m sure you’ve met the type. The Ventrue Primogen ordered me to ruin her, systematically. Her business, her relations, her sister, her friends, her reputation. I refused.”

Azalea’s brows twitched as she parsed his words. “Why did you not do what you were told?”

“Because I knew it was wrong.” Monroe savoured the words, the still concrete feeling he nursed deep in his gut. “Marlene was no threat to the peace. She was a kindred of our domain. We ought have been beholden to her, and, yet, the primogen wanted her ruined. For her own amusement and to test me.”

“Honour. Courage. Duty.” She did not say it softly. There was very little that was soft about Azalea, her voice least of all. “There is no need to reinvent the wheel when cars drive on the road outside.”

The three words spoke to something deep in his soul. Monroe knew he struggled. He had no desire to share his weakness with Azalea, partly in fear she would no longer view him as her superior. How would his childer react? Would Lloyd understand, as the eldest now? Justin and Charlie were so young. So human. And Hawthorne. Some ways, she felt colder than him, more Ventrue. Much like Azalea, actually. Clever, rigid, dutiful. Courage. Honour. Duty. If she knew about the path available, would she want to be on it, to guard herself against the failure of Humanity? Monroe knew the answer. Perhaps it should’ve been his. He was slipping. Perhaps Azalea was right and he clung hopelessly to something that no longer served him. The idea was too much to bear. 

“Not tonight,” he said hoarsely. “Maybe, on another night, we can see about this, but not tonight.” He turned again to his drink, forgetting it was empty, and pushed it aside. “What of you? You must’ve been someone before your Embrace.”

Pity shimmered in her eyes, but she allowed the change of conversation. “A charra of Salmanca. Spain. Archbishop Giangaleazzo of Milan, his childer searched for new templars. Lasombra oft sire by bringing ruin to mortal life, to prove the potential childe can rise above adversity and has the will to survive.”

“Cruel,” said Monroe. “Do you miss horses?”

Azalea glanced down to her immobile legs with a smirk, but lost her irony. “So much,” she said, and it was more than she wanted to give.

“I’ve a track outside the city,” he offered. “With the assistance of a Gangrel, I’m sure we could shape a mount to you.”

“I consider myself grateful the world has moved onto automobiles,” said Azalea stiffly, but a nail rhythmically traced the etching of her chair arm. “Thank you,” she added. She cleared her throat to dispel the gratitude. “I served as a templar for bishops in Spain before being released to create a warpack, the Hollowmen, to take to the New World.”

“Fifties?” asked Monroe, thinking.

She nodded. “The Tower weakened itself with the Revolts and, so, it was ripe.” A smile crossed her face. “Not as ripe as we might’ve hoped. Orsay and Yi had infiltrated LA, to gain intelligence. They, but Orsay particularly, felt the Anarchs more of a line with the Sabbat of the Old World than the uncontrollable rabble we had fallen into in America. We changed sides.”

“I’m sorry about Yi,” he said sincerely, coming to the conclusion that if he hadn’t met the member of the Hollowmen, Yi had died.

“Yi, Kasey, and Raphael were the price we paid,” said Azalea heavily. “It was not an easy decision to come to — obey the wishes of my pack, knowing three willing members would be sacrificed, or obey my superiors, who had proved incompotent. I am a Scion of Honourable Accord.”

“I don’t know if I could’ve done that,” said Monroe. As he thought, he knew he couldn’t. Even if Justin, Lloyd, Red, and Charlie begged him, he couldn’t let one die. He had enough failures on his shoulders. “How do you feel about my domain?”

Azalea’s piercing dark eyes fixed him. “Cautiously optimistic. I cannot earnestly say I’ve ever enjoyed a Ventrue’s leadership, company, or mere presence in my life aside from on the end of a gun, but, as I said. I believe you are reinventing the wheel, though  _ this _ car has been a lemon for too long. If it helps you sleep at day, it is not my concern.”

“You think I’m reinventing the Sabbat?” asked Monroe, struck dumb at the thought.

“Why not? An independent sect, free of influence of elders, where Cainites can be Cainites and share in the wealth of blood and land. Freedom tempered by responsibility and community. Without the faith and Vaulderie, of course.” She shrugged. “Who knows, but it has noble intentions.”

Monroe chewed on that and glanced towards the clock hanging on the back wall. He had nothing to say and felt relieved when Azalea spoke again.

“You have places to be tonight.”

“I do,” he said with regret. He stood. “Stay,” he asked of her. “There’s no need for you and your pack to be as isolated as you are. Rubio’s fond of you.”

Azalea chuckled and folded her hands together. “He says I give him a headache.”

“Only because you talk about Caine and the Final Nights.” Monroe found a smile to give her. “He’s very interested in this Noddist stuff.”

“Might I have a new convert?” she asked wryly.

“Academic, not religious. Just don’t be too harsh on him.”

“Oh, I won’t,” she promised. “I enjoy his company.” She hesitated before adding, “And yours. The Hollowmen made the right decision to come here. I… I hope you retain yourself.”

Monroe started. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. “As poorly as things have gone of late, that means a lot to me.”

He caught Rubio on his way out. As he suspected, Rubio still lingered in his office, a dozen bottles in his arms as he picked the finishing touches. A hundred more bottles still waited, untouched, on the shelves.

“You’re leaving?” he asked, crestfallen.

Monroe laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m afraid so, Manny. I’ll be back tomorrow night, but don’t worry, you still have Azalea.”

Rubio barked a laugh. “ ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘You have Azalea,’ he says. Good luck, my man, whatever you got planned tonight.”

“I’ll need it,” he said. “And a bottle of your whiskey.”

Rubio’s fingers danced over the shelf of blood-distilled brown spirits before he settled on one. “I haven’t thought of a funny name for that one yet,” he admitted, “but feel free to make up your own.”

“Thank you,” said Monroe as he left.

Monroe liked Rubio. Rubio didn’t ask questions. Though, perhaps, he didn’t ask because he knew. Monroe refused to be the one to underestimate Rubio’s spy network. 

Perhaps it wasn’t smart to eschew Ritter’s protection, but Monroe couldn’t live with himself if another one of his childer died. Death, then, would be preferable. He arrived in the Valley all too soon for his liking. He pulled into a resplendent manor house. It could’ve housed elysium or raucous house parties had it been on the other side of the hills. Instead, it only housed the prince, his mistress herald, and their respective childer. 

It was a familiar dance. One he was good at. Not one Monroe liked at all. He said a quick silent prayer and left his car with a perfectly crafted expression that barely contained a smile. Barty wanted him dour and sullen, but excited to be friends once again. Monroe fended off a bear hug, appraised the new flowers, and offered the bottle (“Oh, I couldn’t!”, “It’s a gift.”, “Oh, alright.”). They entered the parlour, a revolting monument to Old World excess.

Barty poured a generous drink for himself and barely a shot into Monroe’s glass. He accepted it and toasted.

“Now, you’re going to hear about the Sabbat,” said Monroe, satisfied.

Barty tossed most of his drink back and smacked his lips. “This is a bribe, then? Not a gift?”

“All gifts are bribes,” he said with a smile. “The Sabbat are going to smell weakness — soon. Sooner than anyone wants.”

“Right, the hunter you got,” he said. Barty topped his drink up and whistled. Mithras the lion came padding down the stairs. Every time Monroe saw him, the creature seemed to grow larger. Barty petted him fondly. “Dropping bodies, huh?”

“I’m going to kill her,” said Monroe, but he couldn’t stop there. He set down his drink to prevent breaking the glass. “Eviscerate her. She underestimated me, took advantage of my mercy to get close to my childer, get herself in their heads and stakes in their hearts, but the last thing she will know is how cruel I can be.”

Mithras watched him with heavy golden eyes. Barty glanced up, struck. “This is a sickness with you, Matt,” he said quietly.

“Is it?” snapped Monroe. He was beginning to become tired of people second-guessing him. Where was the loyalty? After all this, he was entitled to a little faith. “Was it a sickness with our sires? When you staked them in a basement and bled them for years?”

“That’s different,” he said gruffly.

“Because it’s you. And now it’s me. I—” Monroe bit his words but Barty had a good face. So earnest and easy to trust. Monroe always wanted a face like that. It worked so well — especially paired with drink. “I’m so grateful for when the sun comes up,” he said reluctantly, “because it knocks me out until dusk. I just… I need a win.”

“What can I do for you, cousin?” asked Barty softly.

Monroe swallowed his drink. It burned going down in a way that elicited old, old memories. An abandoned and dusty apartment in San Francisco, filled with broken bottles of white liquor, smelling of dust and disuse. He was so close to that apartment. Another year, at most, and he could be home again.

He opened his eyes and found Barty’s.

And Barty would be dead, if Jan Pieterzoon had his way, a martyr for Hardestadt’s scheme.

“You can come to a meeting,” said Monroe. He played his part, what he knew Jan wanted of him. They did not need to talk to communicate. “Camarilla and Anarchs and even myself, we can get back to killing each other later, but, right now, we need to deal with the Sabbat before they attack.”

Barty groaned. “Listen, cousin, I don’t have anything to do with planning any sort of siege or battle. That’s all the archons. Not me.”

“Nines will listen to you,” he said with more patience than he had. “He’ll like you. You’ll understand each other. Make peace with Downtown and the three of us — four,” he added blithely as he thought of Isaac Abrams, “can deal with the Sabbat.”

“I don’t know, Matt—”

“Listen  _ to me _ ,” he said irritably. “If you want to be Prince of Los Angeles without exterminating the Anarchs, that means you’re going to have to rule them. It would be better if they remembered you not as a conquering purging warlord and instead someone who came to a peace table and talked this shit out —  _ and helped them _ . Now, can someone, for once, just listen and  _ do what I say _ ?”

Mithras growled as Monroe raised his voice. It took all he had to not snap at the ghouled pet. Barty only stared at him.

Monroe passed a hand down his face. He had felt the Dominate edge into his voice, the Beast’s response to his frustrations. It burned in his nails and fangs. The urge itched. The shame. “I apologize, Your Highness, I… I lost myself, briefly.”

“I’ll come,” said Barty quietly. He lifted his hand from Mithras’ mane. The creature growled, but Barty put his hand on Monroe’s shoulder, soft and cool and familiar. There was no Presence. Monroe wished there had been. “Just, give me a call. Whenever. I trust you.”

“Thank you,” he said. He struggled to move past the way it felt to hear Barty say those three words. When had Monroe become to easy to manipulate? “I’ll mediate the meeting and get Nines to the table. Don’t tell the archons. They’ll just want you to bring an honour guard. Bring one, at most, someone the Anarchs won’t take issue with.”

Barty thought a moment and smirked. “Victoria Ash?”

Weak and vulnerable from his anger and drink, Monroe almost said it. It lingered on his tongue and swallowing the words back reminded him not to trust Barty so personally. Already, the Valley Prince had more than any other on him. He did not need to know about Ashley Swan. It would only get back to Victoria and, then, where would Monroe be?

“Terrible idea,” said Monroe dryly. “Choose again.”

“Nah.” Barty crossed his arms and leaned against the mantle. “I’ll just show up alone. I basically did this for, what, two years? Going around, South SF, Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose — convincing Anarchs to come back to the Tower.”

“Yes,” he said. “Suppose the Kuei-Jin are quite the motivator.”

Something in Barty shifted. He didn’t move, his voice didn’t alter, but he watched Monroe more closely. “I don’t believe I told you that.”

“Jan did,” he admitted. He suddenly became hyper-aware of the distance between them. It felt like it grew. Four feet became the Grand Canyon.

“Did he?” asked Barty coolly. “Why?”

Monroe held his eye as he lied carelessly, “I’m not sure. I asked him how San Francisco had gone over the years. I was worried, about home.”

“You could’ve just asked me,” he said, eyes narrowed.

“Next time, I will.” Monroe set down his glass again. It didn’t hurt, to think Barty was as suspicious of him as he was about Barty. It should’ve been expected. It was smart. Somehow, it was the final crack the facade needed to fade away entirely. They had never been friends again. Not since the Revolts. The years had poisoned them both. “I’ll call you when I have a date to meet with Nines.”

Monroe bowed, as per their ritual, but Barty didn’t even chuckle. He made his escape quickly before he overstayed his welcome. The night greeted him and he drove casually, as though he could not still feel Barty’s eyes harden on his back.

His phone rang. Monroe felt shamed as he jumped, but there was no one to see the paranoia. If only it could be fixed by listening to some Lasombra mystic. He patched it through the car’s speakers.

“Monroe,” he said curtly.

“I’m still looking, so don’t throw away hope yet,” said Ashley. His voice bit fearful, nervous. Entirely unlike him. Something deeper was wrong. “But I haven’t found the bitch.”

Monroe cursed and pulled off the road before he drove himself straight into a tree.

“Such colourful language,” said Ashley, but it lacked his typical sardonic quirk.

Monroe put the phone to his ear and snapped, “Whatever hole you have in your operations, plug it. Now.”

Ashley scoffed, but, still, it was nervous. For being such a bastard, he had become a terrible liar — at least to Monroe. “I never had the bitch to begin with.”

“Don’t think you can lie to me,” said Monroe calmly. He drew strength from Ashley’s frazzled nerves. “Charlie came to you. She would’ve begged you to protect her.”

“And you think I  _ took _ that offer?” he asked, offended.

“I know you told her you did. You cheated her. She told you where Harper was. And you held her. And she escaped.” Monroe didn’t need to ask if he was right. The stunned silence told him he was. The worst of all possible victories was being right about his failure. 

“Your… Your feral came to me, an hour ago,” admitted Ashley. “Said the bitch crossed the border on 101, heading north. I’m standing here looking at some empty fucking chains. She’s… She’s gone.”

“She escaped,” said Monroe again. Ashley didn’t answer. The confirmation ripped him to his core and Monroe struggled to find any other words. “Find out how. Plug your hole. This is not about Delilah and Zach, not anymore. This is about us working together. This is about the next few months. This is about us ensuring the rest of our people survive.”

He laughed. “ ‘Our’? God, what are you smoking? More importantly, who’s supplying you? And is there any left?”

“It’s ugly,” he said regrettably, “but I wouldn’t have anyone else.”

He didn’t have anyone else.

Ashley started several times. “You’re just full of fun little surprises, aren’t you?” he said nastily. “Nevermind Gary Golden, I have to worry about  _ you _ living in my head. I should charge you rent, that would be a fun little surprise.”

“The only surprise I want you to have for me is Jesse Harper, staked on the Hollywood sign,” said Monroe. “Also, talk Abrams into coming to an elysium with the Valley Prince. Soon.”

Ashley couldn’t find a retort to that. “ _ What? _ ” he blustered.

“Do as I say,” he said testily. “There will be nights to ask questions. Trust me, brother. I will not lead us astray.”

A tiny breath escaped Ashley. The word had more power over him than all the false blood bonds in all the world. The way it tasted coming out, Monroe knew it had power over him, too. The concept of an equal, an ally to have his back fully. He couldn’t think of a more unfortunate person to tie himself to, like this. Part of him wanted to ask Ashley for another oracle, to bind Barty and exchange dark secrets with him, come out on the other side with trust. Everything ugly in the open. Like a twisted mirror.

Then, Ashley hung up, and the opportunity had passed.


	42. A Bush Full of Roses

Zari wondered if the Voermans’ relaxation around her led them to change more readily in front of her. Jeanette had been the one to insist she help her get ready for tonight. They sat cross-legged on the giant heart-shaped bed as Jeanette did her makeup, cooed over her clothes. Maybe it was a little possessive, a little inappropriate, but it was from a good place and a few stern words kept the clown back. Suddenly, then, Jeanette left. Then, it was Therese who watched as Zari took one final look in the mirror.

“My sister made you look like a whore.”

Zari tried not to take offence; the sisters were arguing again. Besides, she looked fierce. She should start filling out her eyebrows. “I would rather Darsh underestimate me. Men typically underestimate a pretty face.”

Therese accepted that. Zari watched in the mirror as, behind her, she crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “I would rather you not take lessons of decorum from my sister,” she said distastefully.

“It is strategy, not decorum.”

“Come,” said Therese shortly. “Wash that off. I’ll redo it, better. You don’t deserve to have the likes of Darsh Amble disrespect you.”

Zari shook her head. “I’ll be late if I stall any longer.”

She reached for the door knob, but Therese beat her and kept it closed.

Zari frowned. Therese wasn’t anxious. Such undignified emotions were reserved exclusively for Jeanette, but there was something.

“We appreciate the initiative you are showing,” began Therese.

“You’re worried about me,” said Zari in wonder.

Her upper lip stiffened. “You are a valued and resourceful member of this organization. Your loss would be regrettable and unpresidented.”

“It’s public, even,” said Zari easily. “I don’t think I’m in any danger from the keeper in his own elysium.”

“We have enemies,” she said, lowering her voice to a bare whisper. “Aphids lurking in the rose bushes.”

“Is that a specific prophetic warning?” she asked wearily. This sort of thing was more Jeanette’s proclivity.

Therese snapped back, offended. “Of course not, merely a metaphor.”

Zari didn’t believe it for a second. “Of course. Well, tell Jeanette I appreciate the effort and company while preparing myself for tonight.”

She reached for the door again but Therese winced.

“Zari.” Her hands landed on Zari’s and tensed, dragging her closer. Had it been Jeanette, Zari would’ve made a gentle note about personal space, but Therese looked so unlike herself it stopped her. “Your absence would be noted. Not only by the prince and all of Westside, but by myself. When Jeanette first proposed such an alliance, I expected little and less, but you have proven yourself a wise and true friend. Do not bring suffering to one who appreciates your life.”

The grounding sincerity and exaggeration, not to mention the cadence, was Therese to the core. The sentiment, though, was entirely expected from both of them.

Not to mention Zari’s gut reaction.

She let Therese envelope her in a hug, clinging tightly. “I’ll have you know, the feeling is mutual,” said Zari unfortunately as they parted.

Therese ruffled her feathers. “Such depth cannot be replicated. As Toreador, you are subject to your own clan’s tendencies. Adoration given to all means little and less when bestowed upon another.”

“Whatever you say, girl.”

Therese broke into a small private smile. “You know about Jeanette and I,” she said in a small voice. “And you didn’t leave.”

Zari lost her train of thought. “Wait. You  _ know _ the two of you are the same person?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped. “I cannot go into the details at the moment, but we are most certainly two extremely different people, simply inhabiting the same body.”

She breathed a deep sigh of relief. “I am so happy to hear you have that amount of self-awareness, at least.”

Therese smiled thinly. “What I wanted to say was thank you.”

“It scared the shit out of me, not gonna lie,” said Zari, grinning, but the tension didn’t ease.

“You didn’t leave,” she said softly again. She adjusted her glasses, blinking against Jeanette’s heavy mascara.

“You needed help. I couldn’t just leave you two like that.”

Therese shook her head. “It’s not truly that simple.”

“It can be. It is,” insisted Zari. “It really just is.” When she glanced down at their hands, she noticed her watch. “But, now I really am going to be late.”

Before Therese could say another word, Zari darted out the door and out into Asylum and on the street. Only a few blocks down, in a fancy modern hotel, Darsh Amble waited for her. Though he had asked her, it wouldn’t be good to keep him waiting. Zari didn’t fear for her physical safety. Between the herald and the keeper, it was more likely one of them would say something that crossed a line and began a rivalry. Nothing any armed ghoul or Therese pressed against the door with a stake could help with.

The hotel lobby had too many right angles and smoky quartz. Darsh waited for her in the restaurant. The tables had been left dressed in white, but diners had long abandoned it. A ghoul closed the doors behind Zari and slid away, invisible in the way that servants to the ultra-rich just were.

Darsh stood from the table and took her in. Neither of them had dressed for elysium, where there was an expectation of reflecting on the crown. Rather, they were Anarchs. And Toreador. His shirt had lost its top several buttons, exposing inches of strong brown chest and curly black hair. Gold shone in rings and a nose piercing. Zari dressed like Ashley had dressed her for years: tight clubwear that could barely be considered legal. Long legs and a faux fur jacket.

Darsh grinned and pulled out her chair. The ghoul reappeared and filled both their goblets from the same pitcher. Before either could drink, Zari swapped the glasses. It only made Darsh laugh.

“My glass had water spots,” said Zari with a sly smile.

“Naturally. I’ll have the ghoul beaten.” He drank, and she followed. “More so, you want to get down to business.”

“Always.” Zari hadn’t moved her chair into the table. She sat as far backwards as she could, legs crossed to the side. It gave her plenty of room to play with, should Darsh provide anything of interest. “We could’ve shared a drink any night. Alone, off the beaten track? I’m waiting for something scandalous.”

“How scandalous does the future of Westside sound?” asked Darsh.

“Ooh,” she said coolly. “Very.”

He had followed her, intently, crossing his arms and leaning on the white table cloth. Whatever he had asked her for, he wanted her to accept.

“Westside has always operated between Malkavian and Toreador for one very good reason,” he said crisply. “We stayed out of each other’s way.”

“We are all children of the Camarilla,” drawled Zari with a raised eyebrow. She wanted to know how hard she had to push to get him to say something traitorous.

“Malkavians are very dangerous.”

“So are we.” She flashed a fang and drank. It was a damn fine vintage.

“I will play ball with them — any sport they want to invent,” said Darsh flippantly. “If we get the Ivory Tower to play referee, I’m game. This alliance with the Voermans, it can only be good for everyone. Put the ugly past behind us.”

“You don’t care that Therese Voerman killed your grandchilde,” said Zari calmly. She tried to imagine what Ashley might’ve done if someone had killed Alice Zhao. Despite not talking since Delilah sired her, he would’ve never forgiven. He still held Isaac Abrams responsible for Velvet leaving him. “My sire. His gang. Almost me.”

“I care,” he said. Darsh’s face fell, his limpid eyes so soft. “I do, Zari. I cut Westside in half, so we never had to see each other again. Bad blood lasts only so long as we let it and it’s time to let it go.”

“Why aren’t you sitting the Voermans down to talk to them?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

Darsh reached for her hand. She let him take it. “Because you, more than any of us, suffered for her actions. You survived on luck, the fancy of a rotten Hollywood thorn, and still.” He smiled, taking her in again. “You’re a lot more than I expected.”

She batted her eyelashes and curled her fingers against his. “Are you impressed by little old me?”

Zari wasn’t an idiot.

“I am.”

He wasn’t. But she was too much of a free agent to ever broker peace, or even act as an intermediary between the Ambles and the Voermans. He wanted to secure her loyalty with empty words before he got to the meat.

“I want you to come home, childe,” he said, so softly. He wasn’t more than thirty years older than her. Grandsire. What had she done to deserve this fuckboy? “I let you drift, for years, decades, and it is my fault. I owe you an apology.”

Zari arranged her face into a mask of constrained sorrow. She sniffed. “Then, make it.”

“I am sorry,” said Darsh. “For all the pain I’ve caused you. For not advocating for you when Voerman was on the warpath. I was a coward, thinking of my family safe at home, when I should’ve thought of my grandchilde on the streets. I’ve had years to ruminate on my mistakes and I’ve changed. Can I have a chance to make things right?”

People don’t change. They just became more of who they truly were.

Zari sniffed again and gave a watery smile, nodding.

Darsh grinned and relaxed. “Yes? Is that a yes?”

“It’s a yes.”

He kissed her knuckles, lips dry and papery thin. “I’m glad. Oh, Zari, I can’t wait to introduce you to the rest of the family.”

Zari retracted her hand and dabbed at invisible tears. “Me, too.”

And she let him talk. Man, the guy could talk. Unlike Mercurio, he didn’t have anything to say with all that hot air. On and on, all about things she already knew. His wife, Sarita, their childer, and  _ their _ childer. It was an impressive little family tree. One Zari had already documented in her book under the census. She didn’t need to know if Sidney preferred violets to roses.

She wished this blood had alcohol in it.

“You aren’t interested,” said Darsh. He slunk backwards, looking at her differently. She couldn’t contain her boredom any longer.

“Glad to know you have  _ some _ self-awareness,” said Zari dryly. “I’m not any fledgling anymore, looking for a strong daddy to take me in. So, in the spirit of honesty and cooperation, why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for?”

For a moment, it looked like Darsh might argue. Then, he retracted and found some respect. “This ain’t  _ Star Wars _ . The Camarilla isn’t the Empire,” he said curtly. “Never was. And we aren’t the Rebel Alliance.”

_ We _ the Anarchs. Zari filed it away cautiously.

“This is  _ The Godfather _ ,” he continued, tapping the table. “The Camarilla always had the shit we wanted — wealth, pawns, blood, land, power. We killed them to get it. They killed us to keep us from it.”

“Looks like the white horse rode in and there’s plenty to share,” she said with a bright smile.

“For now,” said Darsh darkly. “I’m a patient man. I can wait. But I know I’ll be in Westside long after LaCroix leaves. All I need to do in the meantime is stay comfortable.”

_ Then you’re an idiot _ . Zari kept her thoughts to herself. If the Anarchs overthrew LaCroix, there was no way the court would survive — unless Darsh, like Zari, had someone on the outside to vouch for them as a traitor. She doubted it. It was ego spilling out of his lips like oil.

“The Ventrue are doing what Ventrue do,” said Darsh. “Breeding and consolidating power. It’s amazing. As soon as that rat Fiona—”

“I prefer ‘cockroach’,” said Zari mildly.

He chuckled. “Suddenly, with a new Ventrue Primogen, Caitiff I’ve known all my life are coming out and declaring for the Clan of Kings. Blue bloods just keep piling on out of the clown car.”

“We won’t be overrun,” she said confidently. She leaned further back and retrieved her herald’s ledger. She flipped to the page on boons and indicated Fiona and LaCroix’s. “It’s better, for now, to support the crown than to suffer the consequences. There is peace here. It’s going well. Think, for a moment, how things ran under Garcia—”

Darsh laughed. “First of all, this isn’t Angels. Those rat-bastard rabble don’t count. Second of all, Westside’s governing has changed shit all. Voerman runs Santa Moncia. I run Venice. Third of all, I don’t care about ruling  _ well _ . Do I look like a Ventrue?” He scoffed. “I care about my family—”

“I’ve known enough licks to know that’s a very misleading and selfless-sounding way of saying ‘myself’,” said Zari coldly. She smiled. “Just so we’re on the same page.” At Darsh’s foul look, she added, “Don’t get me wrong. I would rather throw my lot in with a bush full of roses than a single Ventrue, but you should know, the Ventrue aren’t nearly as united as you think they are.”

Darsh perked up and leaned forward with interest again. “How do you mean?”

“You serve the prince so long as it’s convenient,” said Zari in a hard voice. “So long as it keeps you alive and comfortable and out of combat.”

He nodded freely. “Of course.”

Zari showed him the ledger and directed his attention to certain boons owed by Ventrue to Tremere apprentices.

Darsh scoffed. “That means nothing. The warlocks have fortified just about every haven and elysium here. It’s what they do.”

“Look at the result,” she said impatiently. “The entire clan is in debt, some more than others. You’re clever enough to have your childer and grandchilder owe Tremere debt. Look at this, though. Ancillae. Powerful licks. Even, as of last night, Fiona.” She gestured to struck out boons. “And Charles Owaine has been paying his debt off lately. How? Why? What has Strauss called in?”

Darsh had nothing to say to that. He flipped through the pages himself, but, of course, they didn’t document what had been exchanged. Only that it had happened.

“This isn’t Malkavian versus Toreador,” said Zari simply. “It’s just a way to survive, one that involves a lot less blood spilled than the Anarch way and can be a lot more profitable — as we both already know.” She put her hand on the ledger to get Darsh’s attention. “Now, I could’ve played you sweet, joined your ‘family’, but I was honest.”

“No one here gets a blue ribbon for honesty,” he snapped.

“I didn’t lie,” said Zari again. “I respected you, came at you tonight to do business that benefits us both. We like the status quo.”

He smirked. “Don’t let any real Anarch hear you say that.”

“Do you not like this world where every lick in ten miles comes to  _ your _ parties,  _ your _ clubs, and looks to  _ your _ mate as the representative of all Toreador?” she asked innocently. She didn’t give him the chance to answer. “This world suits us well — better than either of us thought, I’m sure.”

Darsh shut the ledger and folded his hands. “It was a welcome surprise. I admit, when I heard Voerman imported a limey east coast prince, I was skeptical. Now.” He shrugged. “What business did you want to talk about?”

“Owaine,” said Zari. Even the name soured her tongue. “The prince needs an excuse to execute him. He’s too deep in Strauss’ pockets. I’ve been convincing him to sire, without permission, but I could use a hand to push him off the cliff.”

“Funny,” said Darsh without humour. “That sounds an awful lot like Ventrue business and a whole lot of not-Toreador business.”

“The prince would be grateful,” she added.

“I’m quite pleased with our current situation of distant respect.” Darsh drank. The red clung to the sides of the glass. “LaCroix has little love or trust for Regent Strauss. Might have something to do with how the last Toreador Primogen met his sticky end.”

“The Voermans killed him,” said Zari, but she wasn’t quite so certain.

He considered it and nodded. “Yes, and no. I suppose I killed him, too, then. He was an old friend of LaCroix’s, didn’t like this hoity Malkavian getting in good with his darling prince. He tried to get me to work against Voerman.”

“But you play ball,” she said, understanding.

He shrugged thoughtlessly. “I did what anyone else would’ve. I weighed my options and I chose the one with the least risk to myself. Voerman promised to deal with it. We had a kangaroo court and… Strauss gave him something. A bottle that made him tell lies. LaCroix had him executed for it.”

Zari flipped through the ledger. LaCroix had given it to her, already with a dozen entries and a census begun. She turned to the first nights of Camarilla Westside. In clanky handwriting that Zari recognised as Jeanette’s, there was an entry squeezed between others. Written in later, to hide it.

_ December 17, 2003. Jeanette Voerman owed to Maximillian Strauss, major boon. _

It had never been paid.

Therese had been smart, like Darsh, and gotten a vulnerable lackey to take on the debt and risk for her. The cold cruelty left Zari reeling. Yet another reason why LaCroix was so determined to rid himself of Straus.

“Oh, Therese,” she whispered, “what did you do?”

“Are you just learning the Baron of Santa Monica is an ice cold bitch?” asked Darsh with a hearty chuckle. “Look, I’ll do my best with this Owaine guy, but I won’t promise miracles.” He drained the rest of his glass and stood. “Looking forward to working with you, sweet cheeks.”

As he left, he reached down and pinched Zari’s cheek, none too gently. She didn’t even react. The weight on her heart threatened to collapse inward, imploding. She thought of the deep-seated hatred between Jeanette and Therese, before they reconciled, the threat of a gun in their haven. She thought of the prince, Fiona pinned to the floor with threats. She thought of pompous, insufferable Owaine. Owaine who had to die for the sins of too many bad stories and attempting to carve a life in LA with the Tremere.

For once in Zari’s life, she could choose her evil. 

Evil of human trafficking, of gang violence, of murder in the streets, of hunters in Beverly Glen, of vengeance writ with knives and guns — or evil of betrayal, debts and boons, convenience and the status quo, murder through proxy, reputations more vital than lives, business done in five star hotel lobbies.

It was not an easy choice, but one that had to be made anyway.


	43. The Peace Table

Jack checked over the place for the tenth time. Under the bar, in the back rooms, under the tables. Nothing smelled like gunpowder or explosives, but he could never be too sure. He didn’t really think Nines would blow up MacNeil’s Taste of LA just to kill Monroe and the Valley Prince but, hey, who knew these nights?

Jack hadn’t been in the Taste for years. It was in a forgotten corner of Hollywood, boarded up after it had gone out of style and abandoned entirely by even the oldest of old guard by the time Garcia had taken over. It hurt to see it in such a state. The chairs had been set up on the tables, the bedding from the backroom’s hostel folded neatly, the glasses still stacked for the next night. One night, when none of them had known it, it had been the last. And the Taste had been forgotten, along with MacNeil and his hopes for LA. Jack thought about giving it a cleaning, but the somber grit made it feel like a monument. A mausoleum. 

It wasn’t exactly neutral ground. It was deep in Monroe’s turf, a good ways from Downtown, and nowhere near the Valley, but it had history. Nines, as Monroe knew he would, respected the choice.

Nines had crossed the line into Silver Lake with Damsel twenty minutes ago. Jack felt it ping like a pager in his head. He hadn’t known Nines’ first name was Armando. Armando “Nines” Rodriguez and Damsel Falcon. Real or not, Jack tried to remember to tell her it was a kickass name. They didn’t talk much, but he rehearsed it, the right quirk of a crooked smile, a compliment. Maybe she’d smile back. She sounded like a superhero.

Jack winced as another beam struck his head.  _ Matthew Monroe, Ventrue. Bartholomew Vaughn, Ventrue _ . They crossed the line coming across the hills. Vaughn came alone. Weird.

The door opened with a groaning creak that made it clear it was one bad tempered Brujah away from falling off its hinges. Nines and Damsel stepped in. Damsel lost herself for a moment, seeing the Taste again. She reached out to the nearest table. Her fingers drew polished lines in the dust.

“Hey, man,” said Jack with a frozen smile. “How’s it hanging?”

Nines shut the door. “One chance. Monroe gets one. If he fucks with us—”

“No one’s fucking no one,” he promised. “We’re gonna talk things down and get ready for a good old fashioned dust up with the Sabbat, eh? Clear out East LA, give Downtown some breathing room. I know you guys gotta be feeling overpopulated, huh?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your concern,” said Nines coolly.

Jack slipped his hands into his jean pockets. “Right on, man. You good.”

Nines stalked through the maze of tables, his head clearly filled with the same memories Jack had. He stopped behind MacNeil’s chair and crossed his arms over it. “So. Monroe’s got a plan or something?”

“Monroe’s always got a plan,” said Jack. He sat at the bar, the better to casually keep an eye on Damsel, Nines, and the door.

Nines smirked. “Seems like his plans are looking a little half-baked these days. The mess with those Sabbat. Fiona Fortier getting cozy with LaCroix. And now that hunter in his land. Why do I wanna shake the hand and lick the boot of some blood-blooded dictator who can barely rule his own sock drawer?”

“I’ll let him tell you,” said Jack.

Jack was not Damsel. And Monroe was not Nines. Jack didn’t take the insults any personal. Nines had an image to maintain and he had to walk out this door with his ego, one way or another. 

The door creaked warningly. Monroe looked a little more tense than usual, which was saying something. But if Jack had not known that the man beside him was the Valley Prince, he never would’ve guessed. The man was a head taller than Monroe with a tangle of coarse black hair to his shoulders, matched by a thick stubble. He also looked just as scruffy as Nines, in his own way, in jeans and a Golden State Warriors t-shirt.

Nines lifted himself from MacNeil’s chair. “Who the fuck is this?”

Monroe and Vaughn blocked the door. He glanced to Jack, who prepared himself to restrain Nines.

“I’m Barty,” said the Valley Prince. He offered a weak two-fingered salute. “Former Baron of San Francisco. Prince, now, since—”

Nines went for something on his belt and Jack moved in a flash, but Nines already had his finger in the grenade’s pin. Damsel scarcely moved.

Jack raised his hands. “Come on, man. You really gonna blow up the Taste?”

Looking into those blank blue eyes, Jack knew he would. But he would never live it down. Even if it took out one prince out of two, he couldn’t destroy the last of MacNeil’s legacy. His people would never forgive him.

Nines’ face twisted and he looked past Jack. “You fucker.”

“Ventrue,” Monroe corrected dryly. He shut the door. “Now, put away the armaments, we’re—”

“Shut up, Matt,” said Barty. “Baron can keep his firepower. Fuck, I’ll swallow it if I gotta.”

“I gonna cram my fist down your throat,” growled Damsel.

“You’ll never win,” vowed Nines. “Never. It’ll always come back. Every tyrant wants to forget that he makes his own downfall by giving the little people something to fight for. It spreads from the streets, rats under your feet until the whole house collapses. The glorious revolution—”

Monroe stepped between them as Nines advanced on the prince, but Barty pushed him aside. 

“I fought in it,” said Barty in a hollow voice. There was something very old and lived in about his face. “For the Bay, in the Revolts. I was on the streets. I set fire to the boat I was on, the court’s favourite elysium. I killed the Ventrue Primogen. My sire fell to my fangs. I killed my blood-siblings whose only crime was being too scared and beaten down to join the winning side. A lot of good friends of mine didn’t survive it. Lot of  _ good _ people. And, somewhere along the way, we all decided that all that screaming and death and blood was poetic. Like it wasn’t always just red.”

Against her better judgement, Damsel hesitated. Jack could see it as she moved to stand next to Nines. Jack rose an eyebrow at Monroe, who had a similar hollowness.

Barty sat at the table Nines had been hovering over, the one that used to belong to MacNeil’s inner circle. He slouched low, casual, thick hands heavy with calluses. “I don’t want anymore red,” he said to Nines.

Slowly, Nines took MacNeil’s seat. Damsel hovered behind him, arms crossed, lip pulled in a sneer of disgust but her eyes were worried. A fang poked her lip.

“The Warriors suck ass,” said Nines roughly.

Barty glanced down at his shirt, surprised. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Nines had hate in his eyes when he glanced to Monroe, who had joined Jack to linger at the bar. “Monroe got me here under false pretenses. He said we needed to have a talk-out about the Sabbat. But I’m not surrendering.”

“I don’t expect you to,” said Barty with a shrug. “But, if we’re gonna deal with the Sabbat, I need to tell the Cam that they can move freely through Downtown and East LA without the threat of hand grenades.”

“There ain’t—” started Damsel, but Nines silenced her with a raised hand.

“I got a lotta licks living under me,” said Nines. “Almost all of them come from someplace else, another city—”

“Most of them are Anarch-sired in LA,” Jack butted in. “Neonates, since the Revolts.”

Nines treated Jack to the same look he reserved for Monroe. Jack met it head-on.

“They came to me to live free,” said Nines aggressively. “To not have elders tell them where to put their fangs, when to meet dawn, who to sire, how to live. I’m not compromising them. That’s not on the table. My people got a right to defend their turf.”

“Of course,” said Barty, offended at the thought he’d do anything other. “I didn’t come here to tell you what to do. I came to hear what you need and then tell you how I’m gonna give it.”

Nines snapped back, shoulders tense, but flickering eyes confused. “What?”

“This isn’t a surrender.” Barty flattened his hands on the table. He wore a dented gold wedding band. “Look. I’m more Anarch than I ever will be a cape. I’ve accepted it, but I got leverage — in the Bay  _ and _ here. I’m not saying we can sit the Tower down at a new Convention of Thorns, but we can make California a new sort of place. A Free State, but, when the Sabbat come growling down your spine, you get to call in the nukes.”

“I’m never joining the Camarilla,” started Nines, but Barty interjected.

“The Camarilla is full of Anarchs, in every city. Princes need opposing view-points, if not it’s just a despotic elder circle-jerk.” Barty sighed. “Basically. Man, anyone who can stay baron as long as you gets my props. The Anarchs of this city are in your hands. And you’re old enough to know the way of things. I can see, you’ll break before you’ll bend, but they’ll follow you to their deaths — happily.”

“I don’t tell people what to do,” he said gruffly. “I’m just some guy came out of nowhere that came to be involved in something a hella lot bigger than you and me.”

Barty looked up to Damsel. “I’m giving you something that LaCroix won’t and neither would anyone else. I’m saying you keep Downtown. When we clear East LA, you keep it. That’s Anarch turf. Rule it, police it, completely autonomous — except in name. Embrace and kill whoever, whenever. I’ll take the fall from the archons. Break all the Traditions, except Masquerade. I won’t come down unless some motherfucker wants to play Dracula in the financial district. Let me help you. Come on down to elysium, put on a tie—”

“Fuck no,” said Nines. “I’m not gonna play dress up and kiss archon ass. I’d rather we take the fight to the Sabbat ourselves. We can take ’em.”

His voice hung thinner, hollower in the crypt of the Taste. Jack wasn’t so confident and a look at Damsel told him she felt the same.

“Don’t make others die for your pride,” said Barty softly. “It’s not worth it.”

“That what you did?” asked Nines with a smirk. “You missed blood caviar and Caitiffs licking your boots, so you called up your Ventrue buddies and threw the Bay back to the Tower?”

Barty took the insults in stride. He sat back and considered Damsel and Jack before saying, “I met the Cathayans. They got a lotta names. Cathayans. Eastern kindred. Kuei-Jin. The Middle Kingdom.”

The last one hit its mark. Nines froze, a word trapped between his parted lips. Jack had never seen him scared.

“I let twenty-three licks die for my pride,” said Barty gravely. “I knew their names, their sires, their families. I had to look them in the eye and know I could’ve done different.  _ Twenty-three.  _ And, yeah, I went to the Tower. And the Bay survived because of it. I have a lot of regrets in my life. That’s not one of them.”

Nines folded his hands together and avoided looking at Barty. The floorboards creaked as Damsel shifted. She wasn’t nearly as good at Nines at hiding her thoughts. Barty read them clearly.

“How many?” he asked her.

It was Nines that answered. “Twelve. They’re missing, not dead.”

“You’ll never find ashes,” said Barty quietly. “Honour the man whose chair you’re sitting in. Honour your people. From one baron to another, don’t be so self-sufficient you forget that you’re not the only one that matters.”

Nines rocked in his chair, eyes hardening with a shrewdness as he thought and considered Barty. Jack didn’t dare breathe, in case it broke the spell. 

“I’m not bowing and sir-ing and kissing your ring,” said Nines.

Barty smiled. “You got any idea how many barons up north said that to me? I don’t give a shit. The Cam wants to call me a prince and shit, whatever. I can’t bare Anarchs trying to do it.”

“We’ll need to coordinate an attack,” said Monroe brusquely.

Nines and Barty both jumped, like they had forgotten Monroe was still there. For the first time, Jack could really see he was a Ventrue. That dark cold efficiency. 

“You mind, cousin, we having a moment here,” said Barty, scoffing.

“You don’t bank on getting a Sabbat bishop to any peace talk?” asked Nines. He snorted.

“No,” said Monroe coldly. “I don’t. The last time a prince walked into a Sabbat peace talk, she lost her head. I’m banking on all of us surviving this.”

“Live and let live,” said Barty with a bright smile. “You and I, baron, when you got hunters or wights or Cathayans, just spread the word. Until then, you don’t even need to remember I exist.”

“But you need to come to elysium,” said Monroe again, more irritable than normal. “The archons will expect it, a respected and reported count of fighting units.”

“I got it,” said Nines testily. “But I’m not wearing a tie. And I’m not licking boots or kissing rings or—”

“Anyone gives you shit, they got me to deal with, alright?” said Barty. He stood and clapped Nines on the shoulder. “I like you, brother.”

Nines jerked back, surprised at both the contact and name. “Most of the high clan neonates that were in the Revolts down here took off, or we had to put them down.”

“I’m not getting put down any time soon,” said Barty with a crooked smile. “So, you gotta deal with me.” He turned. “Oh, shit, Matt, did you bring—”

Monroe handed a wrinkled brown paper bag to Nines. He had to pocket his grenade, but he took it warily. Inside was a small wine bottle, but it had been personally stoppered. The cork had a seal burned into it — a Ventrue sword-and-scepter, but there were other bits to it.

“What’s this?” asked Nines suspiciously.

“A bottle of the Ventrue Primogen,” said Barty. “Matt’s sire. He was, what, two-fifty almost? It burns like fire with the fear of his last nights.”

Nines put it back in the bag and his lips pursed. Jack recognised his thinking face and that bitter tightening at the corner of his eyes. He wished he hadn’t come. Even though he had gotten everything he needed and more, his medicine didn’t taste good.

“What’s the bribe for?” he asked Barty.

“It’s a gift.” Barty reconsidered and nodded. “Maybe a bribe to not shove a live grenade down my throat.”

A smile threatened the corners of Nines’ mouth. “Don’t bet on it.”

“If I become a prince who needs it, I’ll walk up to the guillotine willingly,” he said with that cheerful smile.

“Maybe I’ll build one for you, just in case,” he said coolly. Nines passed the bag and bottle to Damsel. He brushed past Barty and pulled open the door, leaving without another word.

Barty turned his attention to Jack. “I’m sorry, prince-baron shit, tunnel vision, you’re Jack, right?” He stuck out a hand.

Jack took it. It wasn’t a firm up-and-down shake, more a quick squeeze and clap. “Shen, yeah. Uh. Your… Highness?”

Barty side-eyed to Monroe. “I know your girl’s blind. Is he deaf? Didn’t I just say—”

“Leave it,” said Monroe shortly. “You need to get back to the Valley and tell the archons they have a battle to plan.”

Barty clapped Jack on the shoulder. “No sir-ing. No ‘Your Highness’-ing. I figure I’ll be sticking around a while and I’d love to get to know all the LA licks — right personal, you know?”

Monroe lingered by the door. “ _ Now _ , Barty,” he snapped. His voice softened a hair, but not much. “Thank you, Jack, for getting Nines here.”

Jack shrugged. “No big. He cooperated, mostly.” 

Barty stuck his hands in his pockets. “I know, I’m surprised. Now, he’s gotta sell allying with a prince to the rest of his barony.”

“That won’t be hard for him,” he said bitterly, thinking of how easily and silently Damsel had swallowed it.

_ Armando Rodriguez, Brujah _ . He crossed over by the Echo Lake exit, right into north Downtown. Damsel wasn’t with him, though. Jack thought he knew where she was.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” grumbled Barty as he followed Monroe out. “Nice meeting you, kid.”

Jack lingered in the Taste after Monroe and Barty left. There was something in the silence that he enjoyed. The roughness of the bar, mismatched chairs, the well-worn darts board. Thousands of pins in the soft foam from old games. MacNeil loved darts. He was a master at them. Jack lowered himself to four legs and, as his nails scraped the boards, he felt them. The long parallel scratches made by dozens, hundreds of claws — walking, running, playing, wrestling. Gangrel and their friends who learned Protean had left their mark, footprints of their memory.

Jack curled in a booth against the far wall. The pillows had been taken away, but it wasn’t too bad. The cougar was in tune to the worn aged place and the memory of the glory days of Anarch LA. Nines was wrong. There had been no glory in the revolution. It came after.

The door creaked open again. And fell. “Shit,” she cursed in a whisper. The long suffering door finally came off its hinges.

Jack grunted gently. He would board the place back up when they left.

Damsel didn’t say anything. He knew the place affected her like it affected him. It wasn’t sacred, but it was the closest thing to it. It demanded something. Honesty. She sat next to him, a hand on his back. Her fingers dug to his skin, into the fur. Together, they absorbed the silence.

“Deb tried to come back,” said Damsel. She couldn’t raise her voice above a whisper, in case she disturbed the peace. “Her and a couple other Nos. Said since they lived sewer-side, they had always been Downtown licks. Nines disagreed. Barony’s still shut, so…”

Jack grunted his question.

“The Black Beards took care of it,” she said softly. “They’re alive, but I don’t know where. Downtown’s getting… rough.”

He purred, long and low. She understood the comfort he reached out with. He smelled the tears rather than felt or saw them. 

“He’s not MacNeil,” she said, choking on the words she ate after so long. “He’s doing the fucking best he can, but no one is MacNeil, and there’s not anyone else for us to go to. There’s no East LA, no La Hermandad, nothing left of Garcia and Crispus and MacNeil.” She snorted wetly and raised her hands from Jack to wipe her eyes. “And I’d rather put on a dress and heels and literally get on my knees to lick the Ventrue archon’s boots than go to Isaac Abrams.”

He couldn’t tell her what to do. There was more than one right answer to all this, he realised. Nines was what so many people needed right now, even being what he was. He was what Damsel had needed, maybe what she still needed.

Jack needed to give more than grunts. He found his way back to two legs and groaned at the ache in his fangs and shoulders. His neck cracked as he sat up.

“Don’t break something, old man,” sniffed Damsel.

He put his arms around her. The beret hit him in the chin, exposing a self-cut mane of fire engine red hair. For the first time in a long time, he wondered what MacNeil would’ve wanted him to do. The guy was a messiah among Anarchs, a paragon, a fable told around bonfires and snake beer. But he had only been a guy.

“Monroe ain’t shit without me and the others,” said Jack in a low voice. “Nines ain’t shit either. The Movement’s not in them. It’s in us.  _ You’re _ hot shit. And, we’re Anarchs, whatever that means, we can’t just follow the guy because we always have. We have to like where you’re going.”

“I do,” she said determinedly, loyally. 

“Those doubts won’t just get up and leave one night,” said Jack. “When you’re not looking, they’re gonna breed like rabbits and you’re gonna give them condoms and pills and nothing’s gonna help.”

Damsel laughed and scrubbed away her tears. “You got a way with metaphors, feral, you know that?”

She didn’t say he was wrong. He could work with this.

Jack arranged for his best crooked smile. “Hey, did you ever think about learning Protean? Because Damsel Falcon is a name that needs it.”

She grimaced. “How did you figure that out?”

“I got some magic.”

“No, you don’t,” she laughed.

Jack inclined his head. Whatever.

“I’d never manage to get a falcon, though, as a Brujah,” she said warily. “What’s the point of being a Falcon who can only turn into a bat or wolf?”

“Being a cool superhero — with fangs,” he added with a flash of his own.

Damsel hmm’d it over. “We should make our own Free State — with blackjack and hookers.”

“That’s what Monroe’s doing, basically,” said Jack with a shrug, but it was a bad move to bring him up again.

Damsel lost her smile. “No. I — There’s — You’re a solid dude, Jack, and I appreciate—”

“I’m here,” he said gently. “However and whenever you need me. We’re not enemies. I just wanna make sure we all get through it okay. We can yell later.”

She slid back against him and pulled the brown paper bag from the floor. “Do you know if this is really, like, Ventrue elder blood?”

“Yep,” said Jack, relieved she wasn’t about to shank him. “It is. Monroe has a couple bottles.”

Damsel dug her chewed ragged nails into the cork. Bits chunked out before she finally wrenched it. Jack felt the preservation spell breaking, intrigued. He would have to ask Orsay later. It was no powerful curse or hex, just a very simple and thin spell. Nothing to worry about.

_ Bartholomew Vaughn, Ventrue _ . Crossed back over the hills and into his Valley, Monroe soon behind him.

Damsel gave the bottle a sniff and jerked back. “Whew! Go on.”

Jack sniffed and felt his eyes water and fangs salivate. “Holy… mother. Is this why Nines talks about the glorious revolution? Cause he got to drink this from the vein?”

Damsel put the bottle to her lips and took a long deep swig. She grinned, eyes sparkling, and handed it back to Jack. “Go on, man. This shit’s killer.”

Jack took a sip and felt it spread like lightning through his nerves. The taste of fire left his fangs tingling for more. Before he did, he tipped a splash out onto the worn and dusty floorboards. For MacNeil, for the Garcias, for the twelve missing to the Middle Kingdom. For the end of what the Anarchs had once been. Damsel knew. She sobered and the excitement dimmed before she took her second drink.

The two of them killed the bottle, but it became less a bottle of potent elder blood shared with grins and giggles and more of a sacrament. Of the hundreds of Anarchs who had planned the Free State in this very bar for their childer, only two remained to remember anything. Jack couldn’t tear his eyes off the splatter. He still heard Barty’s words. 

It had always just been red.

Somehow, he thought MacNeil would agree.


	44. Insomniac

Charlie couldn’t stand being in the hotel room with Justin, Lloyd, and Red. She had done the right thing —  _ she had _ — but she had betrayed them for it. If they knew what she knew, they would hate her. Even in the short time they knew Grimes, he had been one of them. Part of their group of strangers, bound together by being claimed by Monroe.

Who now plotted open war with the Sabbat.

These nights, the streets were more comforting than the cramped and crowded hotel rooms. Hawthorne had joined them, with Monroe’s ghouls. His eyes. His spiders on the Cobweb. Armed. Ritter walked with the eyes and hands of the archon, silent and watchful. Red knitted, clicky clack. Lloyd found it in him to play guitar, when he, too, didn’t hit the streets. Justin poured over study materials with Hawthorne — history and architecture and science.

Charlie needed to feel. She needed to feel the thin soles of her shoes slap the pavement, the cold dead night air on bare arms. She needed the quiet and loneliness to validate the hole in her chest. It pounded like the ghost of her dead heart.

Jesse Harper had escaped. Charlie owed Ashley Swan. One night, she’d have to kill for him, risk her life for him. Maybe even bond herself to him.

Zachary Grimes was still dead.

Delilah Swan was still dead.

Miranda, Lorenza, and little Valencia Garcia were still dead.

William E Smith was still dead.

The Professor was still dead.

An awful lot of people for just a couple months.

The pavement shone like mirrors, portals to worlds with less dead, where lives were peaceful. Worlds with doors but no keys. Humanity, maybe when they had first conjured the Beast, had lost the keys. Charlie would be the last person to find them. She had done the good thing. But was it right? Did it even mean anything if her conscious was clear and Jesse killed more? Those deaths, too, would be hers.

What had ever happened to the human and fledgling she had been?

Even in Silver Lake, a couple of lonely withered palm trees shivered in the wind. Grassy boulevards became better trimmed, strip malls clean and maintained. A corner diner, blue neon and steel rims, called out to her. The neon spilled like an ocean wave, crashing and whispering.

Charlie listened and stepped in.

She didn’t have the time, but there was no one. It was a crummy local place, skating by on bustling weekends, locals with habits of greasy Sunday brunch, and tourists wanting the real deal for overpriced burgers. 

Tonight, it supported a single customer. A man. Charlie sat at the long bar next to him. He drank coffee. Black.

“Hey,” she said with a quirk of a smile, friendly but anonymous.

“Hey,” he grunted. He swallowed his coffee like medicine. “Can’t sleep. What’s your excuse?”

“Don’t got many of those,” said Charlie. “Why can’t you sleep?”

His lip twitched. Lots of him twitched. A bouncing knee, a tapping nail on the cheap laminate counter, too long and untrimmed. He spun his phone on the counter. It played a game of  _ Asteroids _ . “Don’t know,” he said unwillingly. “I can’t. Never could. But I can’t lie in bed and wait for nothing. So, I walk. Head out.”

“Coffee help you sleep?” she asked with a smile.

He might’ve been thirty, but wouldn’t look any different by forty. His clothes looked clean and fairly new, so he might even be somebody in the daytime. He had dark brown skin and sleek dark hair, might’ve been Middle Eastern, but he didn’t speak with any accent.

He snorted. Dimples bounced in his cheeks. “No. But nothing else does, so why the fuck not, huh? What’s got you out in the midnight hours?”

Charlie picked at her nails and shrugged. “A bad… A bad couple of months.”

He drew out a fistful of change. They clanged together aggravatingly as he counted out a couple of bucks. “Esther don’t like when I overstay my welcome,” he admitted. “Gonna keep walking, if you wanna join me.”

She listened to the Cobweb and let it answer. It nodded with her head.

The two of them stepped back out into the street. He pulled up the collar of his windbreaker. Charlie had forgotten her jacket. Grimes had picked it out for her. It hurt to think about.

“I been taking these walks in LA a couple months now, you know,” he said. “See a lotta fucked up shit in the black of night, like people know to hide it all away when the sun comes up.”

“You’re telling me,” she muttered.

He cringed. “Sorry, kid. Just, trying to say that you got ears if you want them.”

“I’ve done some bad stuff,” said Charlie. The words stuck in her throat like razor blades. “And, worse part, I’m not paying for it.”

“You are,” he said easily. He slowed his pace to match hers. “I don’t gotta know what it is, but you can’t sleep. And you’re torturing yourself. You feel so bad you want someone else to take over and make you pay.”

She couldn’t summon the voice to find words, so she only nodded.

“It’s amazing — I think, at least,” he said. “My walks take me down a lotta places that, in the day, are fine and dandy. By night, a whole different beast. I work sometimes, just up there, at the Xerox center. Nice place, get to bother Esther. Now, there’s some working girls, just working. Sometimes, their pimp comes along, gives them something, takes their money, gives them a smack. I’ve seen a cop come on by and chase off the homeless down that alley, beat ’em like animals. Gangs’ll deal or fight or shoot, right out in the open like this is WWE.”

“It’s depressing,” she said.

“I think it’s amazing.” He stopped and, reluctantly, Charlie stopped to face him. “Also seen cops give rides down to the shelter on Seamor. There’s a rabbi that’s kept at least two of those girls off the corners, clean and sober. The man who runs the youth center, he raised most of those gang kids and they listen to him right like a mother. Sometimes, they get out. Been here long enough to remember that man used to run with gangs himself, before a pastor got him out.”

His words felt less lonely, joining the stars as glaring features in the night. “The world is cruel, because people make it cruel,” said Charlie. It was something Rhys had told her. Something the Professor used to say.

The man cracked a smile. “I like that. Thing is, we’re people, too.”

“Don’t feel much like people,” she said. The unsatisfied hunger, reaching across the Cobweb, ached. She could smell the man’s blood in his veins.

“Whatever you did, kid,” he said, shaking his head, “you gotta put it behind you and live with it — fuck what others say. Simple as that.”

“Nothing about this is easy,” she said in a weak voice.

“Said it was simple. Nothing’s easy. There is nothing harder than a life you didn’t want.”

Eyes downcast, she noticed a band around his wedding finger. Not a ring, but a tan line, like he had worn a ring for some time. The shadow and echo filled his words.

“Sometimes, we have to remember where we come from, to know where we need to go,” he said. “Because no one will tell us. And no matter who they judge, how they hate, no one else knows what you need.”

Charlie’s eyes lingered on the prostitutes across the street. The pimp had left. Alone, they talked and laughed, content even in their own hell.

She knew where she needed to go. “Thanks,” she said to the man.

He blinked but smiled. “Whatever I said, hope it helps you. It’s a hard enough life without torturing ourselves, too. Let the rest of the world do that. It will, gladly.”

Charlie turned her back on him and didn’t give him a second look. She had somewhere to be. He was right. She needed to remember where she came from. It was a long walk, but she had a lot of nothing to think about. She needed to feel the empty calm in her head. The flush of certainty her encounter with the insomniac had given her.

Even after her mother’s funeral, Charlie had never visited the grave. At first, because she couldn’t bare to, but then there was no time. Now, she had nothing but time.

She hopped the fence of the graveyard. Many stones began to show signs of weathering. Forgotten flowers dried and rotted to sweet slime. The groundskeeper kept it tidy, but the dozens of rows held a cluttered gravity of their own. Invisible, it was both claustrophobic and alone. The shadows grew long as the graveyard took her away from the caustically lit streets.

It took Charlie several minutes, but she found it at the end. A simple grey headstone, one among hundreds. The earth had been overturned more recently than most and she realised why when she read it.

_ Wendy Bradley. Beloved mother and friend. _

_ February 9, 1963 - December 12, 2003. _

_ Charlie Bradley. Cherished friend, sister, and daughter. _

_ August 28, 1984 - December 11, 2004. _

That had been Dustin’s doing. Charlie, never Charlotte. An empty casket. She hadn’t noticed at the time. Almost exactly a year apart. The feeling left her limbs and Charlie sat on the cold apathetic ground. Did Bella come here? Did Dustin bring her? Had her friends come by? No. They had lives, classes, jobs, relationships.

Charlie realised, then, that it wasn’t only for who she was that she grieved. It was for the Charlie who would never be. The Charlie who went back to school, worked at  _ The LA Times _ , found a normal girl, settled down with too many cats. The Charlie who wore jeans on Casual Friday and talked shit at the water cooler. The Charlie whose most tragic event was losing her mom young and whose greatest crime was a gruff lack of filter. The Charlie who married that cute normal girl in a double wedding with Dustin, by the ocean, who panicked over turning thirty and her first gray hair, who had to give Bella the sex and drugs talk, who managed one day to repair their strained relationship over the years after their mother’s death, who met up with Bella for brunch twice a month to catch up over mimosas and expensive waffles.

Charlie knew how to grieve. 

“One night, it would be the second thing,” she said.

“Really, for Malkavians, it’s not a great thing to start talking to ourselves,” said Rhys from behind her. He leaned across a tombstone. “People get jealous.”

“Aren’t you scared of the Ace of Spades?” asked Charlie.

“It’s Jesse Harper, isn’t it?” he asked calmly, like he knew.

She didn’t want to ask how he knew. Part of her already realised. The Cobweb. It occupied too much of her thoughts, the screaming guilt and shame. Of course, it would leak out. She thanked herself she hadn’t been dwelling too much on the archon and Monroe.

“I don’t know,” she lied.

He snorted and sat next to her. “She was a great catch.”

“So am I.”

He raised an eyebrow and didn’t dignify that with an answer. “I was hoping to start up—”

“Tell me, please,” she said, unable to take her eyes off the gravestone. “Why did you turn me?”

Rhys twiddled his thumbs, gnawing on his inner cheek. A gnarled tree above them shifted in the wind and it, too, prodded him to continue. “I met my sire the summer of eighty-two,” he said heavily. “His name was Boris. Great guy. Sweet. German. I was eighteen, not out to my parents, and desperately in love. It was like a plague, sweeping through the bars. Every gay man I knew — except for Boris. One by one, they disappeared into hospitals and statistics. And then it was my turn. I got sick.”

Charlie knew a little about the AIDS pandemic and had made her own guesses, but the strain in Rhys’ voice made her feel guilty for asking. Not that guilty, though.

“My parents didn’t visit,” he said flatly. “Not my friends — hets were scared they’d catch it, gays were busy dying. Wasting away. The nurses isolated us and left us to die alone. Except for the lesbians.” His lips thinned into a small smile. “Your people. They took care of us, nonprofits and charities. This one woman, she’d read me the paper every day and just… sit with me. She told me about her lover and — I don’t know. Just hearing that there were gay couples out there not dying, it made me feel better.” He coughed. “Boris came in, sobbing, and turned me without asking. We never recovered. Broke up. Ran away. Came to LA. Found the Professor. You know the rest.”

Maybe it was the Cobweb, but Charlie could hear it. See it. Taste it. The endless gloom of a hospital, bright artificial lights and busy machines, flashes of chills and weakness. And a woman, sat by the window, a smile haloed in sunlight.

“She split a cinnamon roll with you,” she said dimly.

“Every morning.”

“You lied to the Professor,” she said to herself. “Blamed the Cobweb.”

Rhys shifted uncomfortably and stretched his legs out across her grave. “Yeah. It’s been twenty years, but I hadn’t told anyone that yet. I didn’t want to share.”

“Do I look like her?” asked Charlie. She faced Rhys and, for the first time, noticed the pained memory in him.

He nodded, biting his lip. “Just like her. Especially, with the hair short. But she wore glasses.”

“Eternity’s a long time,” she said thinly. “I could need reading glasses in a few hundred years.”

He chuckled. She joined him.

“You didn’t have to turn me,” she said in a small voice. “We could’ve been friends.”

“I know.” He nodded and drew a heavy breath. “I know. I followed you, when you were camping. I just wanted to say hi, but you fell back, down off the cliff. Hit your head something good on the way down.”

“Learn your lesson, then,” said Charlie. “Don’t stalk people.”

She was surprised his admission didn’t elicit the same anger in her it once might’ve. She remembered the shadow, how she had been startled and fell. The pleasure of the bite.

Rhys clawed through his shaggy hair. “I was really worried you wouldn’t rise — or not right. You didn’t, for a long time. I didn’t think I should move you, but I had to go call the Professor and, when I came back, you were gone.”

“Why wouldn’t I rise?” she asked. “The fall?”

Rhys wouldn’t look at her. “I’m, technically, still sick. We’re not ‘dead’ so much as we’re ‘on pause’. I still got AIDS.”

Charlie realised and it stopped her cold. “And you fed me your blood.”

“I don’t bite humans,” he said hurriedly. “I started an outbreak as a fledgling and, man.” He couldn’t finish. “Ghouls are almost worse. I mean, the blood’s enough to keep them alive but it’s not a  _ great  _ alive.” He beamed. “You look like you’re doing okay, though.”

Charlie glared.

His smile didn’t waver. “Looking peachy.”

She snorted and pulled her knees up to her chin.

“Don’t think you were alive long enough for it to take any,” he said, more seriously.

She didn’t answer. His smile, their laughs, they didn’t belong to this place. She didn’t deserve his friendship.

“This is better,” he said softly. “Sure, it sucks, but we’re outside normal society. It’s a perk. No expectations. No one — aside from Orion, maybe — giving you shit about what you do, what you look like, who you are. Most licks, in my experience, are more Malkavian-phobic than homophobic.”

“You took a lot from me,” she whispered.

Rhys looked like he might’ve wanted to put his arm around her and thought better of it. “You were miserable. Now, you’re still miserable, but you got a future. Maybe I was selfish, but I’m not backing down: I did you a solid.”

In her last months as a human, Charlie had been weeks behind on several bills. Even three minimum wage jobs hadn’t been enough. She would’ve sold the house, probably relied too much on Dustin and his family. Their friendship might’ve suffered. Bella wouldn’t have been able to cope. Charlie would’ve muddled through as a fake mother, grown to resent her sister.

Now, Bella had a life. Dustin got to have a vampire-free existence and remember her well.

Charlie couldn’t admit Rhys was right. Because he wasn’t. But he didn’t deserve a black eye and broken nose.

“I should’ve broken you up with Miss Vampire Hunter,” he said indignantly. “Then you could’ve thanked me.”

“She’s not—”

“Let’s call a spade a spade,” he said with a wicked grin.

Charlie thought on it, all of Jesse’s years alone, killing vampires, mourning her brother, loathing herself. “She was hurt.”

“Relationships aren’t therapy,” said Rhys. “And you didn’t deserve to get your wrists broken.”

She glanced at her hands, healed, like nothing had happened. “Wrists heal.”

“So do people, on their own,” he said.

“No, they don’t,” said Charlie hollowly. She had had just about her fill of Rhys and the mournful silence of the grave. “They heal with others.”

She had been guilty and arrogant, thinking she had any power to make things right. A profound weight settled heavier before lifting. The Professor didn’t know she had befriended Rhys. Jesse wouldn’t know she had put herself in Ashley’s debt to save her. Grimes wouldn’t know if she bunked with Justin. No cash or undead guardian angels could help William E Smith’s family. Ultimately, no one knew, or no one cared.

She needed to take the advice she had given Jesse, to build a life with people around something more than violence, to go back to Midnight and Orion and Copper and play D&D, to let Red teach her how to knit, and Lloyd how to play guitar. She needed to forgive herself. And live.

The insomniac was right. It wasn’t easy, but it was simple.


	45. Black Mirrors

Monroe had to admit it to himself. Jesse Harper had escaped him. Ashley had a flaw in his operations — perhaps Ashley was disloyal himself, Monroe considered briefly before discarding the idea — and Harper had escaped. The domain was safe. Already, more kindred had begun to test the night and spend their times at Medusa. Rubio had customers. Talk turned to the Sabbat as gossip spread about a three-way agreement, between themselves, Downtown, and the Valley.

Still, he was not satisfied. The failure itched in his veins, dragging his lips in a permanent snarl of disgust as he stared out the window at home.

Hawthorne could not see that. She knew best how to handle him, his black moods when they had lived on the roads, when the Camarilla courts mocked him ceaselessly and he second guessed if such a life as an outcast was worth living. Sometimes he put a voice to that question.  _ Always.  _ It was her only answer. Knowing her better, by her Choosing and her inner strength, it backed her answer.

Her hand slinked along the back of his shoulders, a single finger meandering in his hair before she passed him by. “Draw me a bath, please.”

“Are you mistaking me for Ritter, now?” he asked bitterly. He leaned into the touch, but it was already gone. “Or Dawson?”

But the questions were his ego. She knew what she was doing. And he did as he was told.

It was all he could do, invest himself in the smallest of requests, please the one person who had ever meant something to him. And he would succeed, where he failed all other places.

Hawthorne had also said “please”.

Their house was not large, but the bathroom remained sizable and a collection of varied and noxious bath chemicals even larger. But, he took his time. As she always had for him.

“It’s done,” he said stoically.

She disrobed and he was given only a brief glimpse of her body before it slipped into the water. The gentle foam parted as her breasts and knees formed islands in the ocean. Steam rose around her face, her pinned dark hair. A smile found her face and contentment washed over her. It seemed to transfer into him.

“You’ve been quiet,” she said.

Monroe shut the door and sat on the edge of the tub. There was little reason to lie to her. While he managed to entertain Rubio and Azalea, even reassure his childer, he did not speak a word at home. “Yes.”

She tilted her head against a pillow of a plush towel, waiting patiently.

Monroe moved to sit more comfortably on the floor. He rested his head in his hands and sighed. “I’ve been thinking… too long and too much.”

The time had passed. Surely, now, as his childe, she might’ve depended on him more than ever. She was right, as she always had been. But the cleansing of the blood bond had wiped away much of the inequality between them. More than anything, reflected, he wanted a confidante. Arms he could fall into, unflinchingly. 

“I should be relieved,” he said, every word resisting its exit from his mouth. “Harper, for now, no longer threatens us. Truthfully, we are in more danger than ever before.”

Her fingers skimmed the water’s surface. Ripples spread in concentric circles. “Isn’t your neck getting sore with all that looking over your shoulder you’ve been doing?”

“Yes,” he said softly.

“Come in, you idiot.”

Monroe obeyed. With the sternness of a soldier marching to battle, he removed his clothes and slipped into the bathtub. The water level rose threateningly but remained stable. Silky water clung to him, every motion an explosion of vanilla and saffron. Under the water, their legs met in a tangle. 

Monroe leaned against the rim and shut his eyes. Heat pathed up his neck as he slunk lower. “The Anarchs will want to reclaim their pride — after allying with the Camarilla. Even knowing it is unwise, they will test Barty. He will dispatch me to pacify Nines — a monumental task. 

“Fiona Fortier is still missing, a weakness of my own making who could know uncountable things of our own operations. She will seek vengeance. Perhaps instead of Blue Moon, it will be our home or she might find Harper.” Briefly, unwillingly, his mind flushed with images of outcomes if Hawthorne had been trapped, alone. 

“There are also these Cathayans, who I like less the more I hear about. Even with an almost assured victory against the Sabbat, battle has too many variables to guarantee a favourable outcome. Lloyd wants to fight. So does Jack. And the Hollowmen and the Reapers and Deathsingers. I will, as well. But there is only one of me.” He leaned his heavy head against a wet hand. The air fast chilled him. “And Jan thinks to make me Prince of Los Angeles. Which means Barty’s life is at risk — and he might be playing me, I’m unsure.”

Hawthorne stiffened in the bath. Her breath caught. 

Monroe gave it a moment thought and opened his eyes. “You would fancy that, wouldn't you? Me being prince?”

So much had changed in him these last months. He didn’t know how he felt about that crown anymore. He didn’t dare think of it.

She composed herself. “Let me attempt to alleviate a concern from your table. Myself.”

“Believe me, Audrey, I haven’t gotten to you yet," he said dejectedly. 

“You fear I will be caught unawares and kidnapped, leveraged against you, killed, or abused. Am I close?” She flicked water towards him.

“Very, but you could do with some more embellishment.”

“I am competent.” Hawthorne straightened herself, rising from the water like a siren. “When Ashley Swan—” 

Monroe groaned at the name. “I haven’t even  _ gotten  _ to him yet.”

“When Blue Moon burned and we lost our financial leash on him, I reforged it,” she said coolly. “I forced him to go into partnership with myself. Truly, the work is simple and he supplies my sustenance. I don’t hunt, or chomp on poor Anton.”

“How did you force him?” he asked, intrigued. His mind wondered towards fancies of beating Ashley with a stick until he acquiesced. 

“I eliminated all other establishments he used to launder money, either by rendering his contact void or condemning the business,” she said, sounding immensely pleased with herself. As she should. 

“How did you know all of them?” asked Monroe. “Even I could’ve only named two or three.”

“Three years ago, when we first arrived, you asked for a complete inventory on his operations,” said Hawthorne. “I delivered the report orally and forget nothing.”

Monroe looked at her with new eyes and suddenly saw it, all the cleverness and ingenuity and cutting drive to survive that had made her such a valued retainer. But a kindred. His childe. 

She smiled, that small private smile like she had a secret only she knew. “Are you still so worried about me, Your Highness, my sire?”

The title in her mouth was nothing less than a seduction. A barest whisper from ripe lips, brimming with emotion. Her face curved in lust, but it wasn’t sexual. Kindred could exercise blood, force neurons to fire and organs to respond, but sex drives remained quiet; the act became emotional or sanguinely erotic. Ventrue were scarcely the only kindred to lust for power, but he had never seen her like this. It was a black mirror of his own unaddressed feelings.

Hawthorne found him and pressed Monroe back against the tub wall with a feather touch. “What do you think, Your Highness, my sire?” she said again. Her breath whispered against his face.

It was nice. Good. Better than nice. A compensation for the hell of his immortal life. He had played the part and taken on its responsibilities — without its rewards. It was the summit of one hundred fifty years slaving. It was respect. It was recognition of his devotion. It was power. His due. His future. It was victory. 

He nodded dimly. “It’s nice.”

Hawthonre snorted. He laughed. The moment passed. And he seized her hair, pressing her mouth to his. She was startled but joined eagerly. When given a breath to speak, she egged him on with those words. Monroe knew he took her too roughly. It wasn’t about the sex. It was about everything else. His blood in her veins, the titles on her lips, the pride in his chest. Everything in him screamed to bite her as she moaned — for him, her prince and sire — but he managed to keep his fangs from her. 

The water had grown tepid by the time he had finished with her. Hawthorne sprawled languid against his chest, the water perfectly still so long as they didn’t move. In the quiet, like a thief in the night, a shame stole up on him. 

“I never thought I might’ve been a prince who would've wanted to... hear that... during,” he said.

Hawthorne chuckled, satisfied. “Oh, I knew you’d like that.”

He didn’t like the idea he was so transparent, especially to another, even Hawthorne. 

“Don’t expect it every time,” she added with a smile. “I am a very busy woman and I can’t be bothered to spare four extra words on your ego.”

“Very busy,” he agreed. There was an unnamed pleasure in knowing she had acted in his interests, without his request. A unity against the dark world.

The worst of all possible sounds echoed against the bathroom walls. It was a cellphone. Monroe’s. He shut his eyes, but Hawthorne lifted herself from his arms.

“At least he had the decency to wait until we had finished,” she said grumpily.

He straggled out first, offering a hand to balance. The rings ended, before beginning again.

Hawthorne reached for a plush towel. “Insistent. Answer it.”

“I don’t want to,” he complained before doing so. “Monroe.”

“Hey, it’s Lloyd. I got an update about Fortier,” he said anxiously. “Wanna meet at the hotel or Medusa?”

Monroe winced at his answer. Until Ashley found the leak in his operations, public spaces could be dangerous. “Come to me,” he said. He wanted to keep his house free of the taint of politics but the world, clearly, had other plans. “As soon as possible. I want this mess behind us.”

He hung up before Lloyd could argue. If he had something to say before coming, he could text him. Monroe relayed it to Hawthorne, who shook her hands of it.

“As much as I’d like to get my claws into Fortier, we should wait until the Sabbat has been dealt with,” she said. “Nines and Abrams could take offence to another old guard Anarch being suspiciously wiped off the map, by your hand.”

“You figured that out, did you,” he said. He was impressed, to say the least. Only he and Ashley had known about the grisly deed. 

“Eventually, I figured you would kill the Garcia girls.” Hawthorne tucked the towel around her. “It was the only logical thing to do. They couldn’t be trusted. Too Anarch, too independent, no way to control them, with a valid conflict against you. Harper was convenient.”

“You’re learning,” he said. “Maybe I should delegate you to relations with Nines.”

“You should learn to delegate,” she said thoughtfully. “You can’t be the only one to shoulder all the domain’s problems.”

“I can’t have a court,” he said bitterly. The longer this circus went on, the more he sympathized with Barty. “If I turn Camarilla publicly, right now at least, they’ll rebel. I need time.”

“You have me,” said Hawthorne with a gleaming smile.

Not for long. Monroe didn’t say it. They both knew their limited time together before she would progress to Jan Pieterzoon for her agoge’s tour would come to an end soon. Sooner than either of them wanted.

“I need to shower,” he said brusquely. “I’m not meeting Lloyd smelling like this.”

Hawthorne laughed as she left, calling for Ritter to attend to her.

Monroe moved as quickly as he could, but he still found Lloyd waiting for him in the living room. Lloyd didn’t have a smile for him. Something had gone wrong. Monroe gathered himself, but the unruly Brujah had a bow to his neck, like a bratty child come to a parent for a scolding.

Monroe considered how little he wanted Ritter — and Pieterzoon, as an extension — to know about yet another failure. Ritter assisted Hawthorne with her class materials, reading the textbooks aloud and taking dictation, but he had proven himself to have sharp ears and a quiet disposition.

“Come,” said Monroe, leading Lloyd down into the basement. “I’m not upset with you,” he added as Lloyd took in the unfinished holding room. “We just need some privacy.”

Lloyd stepped down the stairs and into the main floor. It was a concrete cube with a drain in the center. Tara had left her mark, scratches and blood from her last vessel. Though he couldn’t see them, Orsay’s blood magic wards prevented kindred from coming back up the stairs unless Monroe let them.

“Sweet room,” said Lloyd. “Are they my digs when I come visit?”

Monroe shut the door and sat himself on the stairs. “They are for guests.”

Lloyd stuck his hands in his pockets and nodded to himself. “So. I got some bad news, man.”

Monroe forced a smile, though, as he crossed his arms, his nails dug painfully into himself. “What is it? Has Fiona Fortier  _ also _ fled LA?”

“I only just heard,” he said apologetically. “But, apparently, LaCroix saved her. She owes him a lifeboon and is serving as his Ventrue Primogen in Westside.”

It shocked him beyond words.

It shouldn’t have happened.

It was not  _ possible. _

There were several steps to that series of events. Monroe should’ve been made aware of each of them. He had Zari in Westside, reporting to Ashley, who cooperated with Lloyd to sniff her out. This shouldn’t have been possible. LaCroix was desperate, not scheming. As his herald, Zari would’ve kept a ledger. Ashley would’ve known instantly by email. Lloyd had no issue calling him at home.

There was a hole in  _ Monroe’s  _ operation.

Someone was keeping secrets.

Secrets implied a conflict of loyalty.

Worse still, Fiona would be oathbound to tell LaCroix everything she knew. Monroe had not been bosom friends with Fortier, ever, but the old Anarch had prepared to move against him for some time. There was no knowing how much information he had gleaned — information which Fiona was the last vessel of.

_ “What?” _

Lloyd flinched at the tone in his voice. “She’s… sort of… out of our reach.”

Monroe stood. It was enough to make Lloyd raise his hands.

“Whoa, whoa, I’ve been thinking—”

“That’s not your strong suit, is it?” he asked.

Lloyd made a show of standing his ground. “Look, no one really knows me. LA’s full of newcomers now. I can slip right across Westside like a ghost. They can call Vitel up, ask him. I’m one of the oldest and most consistent pains in his royal blue ass. Camarilla-Anarch to the core, he’ll say. There aren’t a whole lotta Brujah, gives me leverage in the court. I can get in and kill her.”

Monroe stepped down the stairs. Lloyd lost his footing and backed up. He knew he was in trouble. He was a brave kid, but weak in the face of discipline. The only question was how much trouble. Monroe knew from experience a stern word could reduce the punk to tears.

“Good plan,” said Monroe through tight lips. “When’d you think of it? The drive over?”

It wasn’t Ashley. Of course it wasn’t Ashley.  _ Brother _ . What a stupidly small price for such an absurd amount of loyalty. It was not a term of endearment, but a curse.

“Just — Just now, man,” said Lloyd. A nonchalant smile flickered his lips.

“When did Ashley tell you this?  _ Look at me when I’m talking to you _ ,” he snapped.

Lloyd turned back to face him. Only a handful of steps separated them, and Lloyd had nowhere else to go. His eyes widened, but he tensed to steady himself. He quaked in his leather jacket and riding boots.

“Two weeks ago,” admitted Lloyd in a small voice.

“You don’t even understand,” whispered Monroe.

Lloyd didn’t. How could he? None of them bore the burden of leadership like Monroe did. What if Fiona knew where he lived? What if she had known where Rubio built Medusa? What if she had been able to follow the paper trail of utilities in Blue Moon, in Ritter’s fake name, to things owed by Jan Pieterzoon? 

What if Hawthorne, or Charlie, or Red, or Justin, or Jack, or Rubio, or Azalea had died? Lloyd had robbed him of two weeks to address this. Two weeks. Fourteen nights that Monroe had wasted, networking, building closer alliances with Rubio and Azalea. Nothing would’ve been worth that if another had died.

It wasn’t harmless. Lloyd hadn’t told him in fear of a cussing out — one he knew Monroe wouldn’t give. It was nefarious.

It was a betrayal.

And betrayal never came from enemies.

Lloyd. Sweet stupid loud-mouthed Lloyd.

“I can fix this,” said Lloyd desperately. “I can make it right. Come on, Monroe.”

Just because Lloyd didn’t know anyone else in the city, just because he didn’t owe loyalty to anyone else—

Slowly, Monroe smiled. It reassured Lloyd, who started bobbing his head along.

“Okay. Alright. See, let Lloyd deal with shit. I get shit done, you know—”

“Did I ever tell you about Richard Swentings?” asked Monroe.

Lloyd blanched and shook his head. “No, sir.”

Sir. It was several steps below _ Your Highness, my sire _ , but it would do.

“See, among the high clans, coteries are organized by sires and elders, more like arranged marriages than anything. Richard, and I, and Barty Vaughn, were part of what other clans called the Blue Bloods’ Hammers. We were brothers. Close. We, inevitably, were sent out to do dirty work the Ventrue wanted kept in-house.

“Richard managed to settle down for a time with Amelia, a beautiful young Toreador, an artiste if there ever was one. We all loved our sister-in-law, such as she became, though clan business was clan business. And she wasn’t a Hammer. 

“One night, I was attacked, in such a way that I knew one of the Hammers was responsible. I tracked it down to the work of the Toreador Primogen. Amelia’s sire.”

Monroe took a step closer. “What should I have done to Richard Swentings? I loved him like a brother. Celebrated his Embrace nights, went to the cinema with him, killed with him. We were all in the same boat and, yet, he was a leak.”

Lloyd’s mouth fell open and he backed away, slamming himself against the back wall. “No, man. I —  _ Nothing happened _ . We all out of the weeds. We’re safe.”

“When something happens because of this, don’t you dare tell me that,” said Monroe, raising his voice. “You think the war starts when we follow some archons against the Sabbat. It’s already here.”

He turned away from Lloyd. It had been a long time — years, many years — since Monroe had frenzied. He felt his skin flush, blood rushing to the skin in preparation to fight. He snarled. The more he talked, the angrier he became.

“You’re a selfish little bastard, you know that,” he cursed. “You kept this—”

“I fucked up,” said Lloyd in a whiny whimper. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll do better.”

“Pathetic. Is this how I surround myself these nights? With cowards and incompetents?”

Lloyd started to cry. He tried to catch a breath, but only heaved air. He doubled over and coughed. Vitae-stained tears splattered the cement. “Apparently,” he managed.

“Don’t play smart with me, boy,” said Monroe. Instinct more than anything, he reached for Lloyd’s will. Lloyd felt it again and he stopped crying. He glanced up at Monroe, his face full of horror. Monroe didn’t have a command in mind, so he said the first thing that came to him. “ _ Kneel. _ ”

Lloyd collapsed to both knees with a sickening smack of bone on stone. He kept sobbing but couldn’t tear his eyes away from Monore’s.

Monroe had killed Richard Swentings himself. No one had ordered it, but it needed to be done. Betrayal, even accidental, had a way of turning love to hate.

“I…” Monroe had no idea what he needed to say. To explain himself. Ask for understanding. Beg to know why Lloyd hadn’t trusted him. To curse him.

Lloyd’s will squirmed in his. Monroe tightened his grip. It kept the Brujah from frenzying, though he, too, had flushed blotchy red and his fangs curved out. Fangs, thick and white, sharper than any knife.

“ _ Pull _ —”

Pull your fangs.

_ I have half a mind to reclaim your blood tonight. Piece by piece, eh? _

Monroe dropped Lloyd’s will like a hissing snake. Lloyd gasped at the sudden relief and pitched forward onto all fours. He continued to cry, ragged wet sobs.

Monroe backed up, trembling. 

_ I have half a mind to reclaim your blood tonight. Piece by piece, eh? _

The voice was distant, a product of century-old memory rather than an animus of the Beast. The word choice was half forgotten, the cadence faded, but Monroe remembered the night and he remembered the hatred. He remembered the agony of his fangs in pliers. 

_ My first fear is that I will turn out like my sire. My second is that I already am. _

_ I won’t stop you.  _ You _ will. You will cross a line you never knew you had. _

_ I appreciate having my very own Lady MacBeth… You don’t need one. _

The arrogance, the anger and vengeance, the cruelty, basking in power. A despot. A tyrant. Back against the wall, Monroe had become his sire. And Hawthorne knew.

Standing on the other side of the equation, standing over a distraught and failing neonate, Monroe scourged himself. 

It was the line.

Monroe picked up whatever pieces of himself he recognised and bent down to Lloyd. The boy cringed from him, but Monroe managed to pull him to his feet and get him out of the basement. Lloyd dropped into the couch. He sobbed and Monroe loathed how little it affected him. He was more horrified by the idea of becoming Fowler than he was Lloyd’s pain. Lloyd jumped and shook when Monroe sat next to him, so he didn’t sit.

The noisy crying summoned Ritter and Hawthorne. Monroe locked eyes with Ritter. He could explain it later to Hawthorne.

“I need to leave,” he said brusquely.

Monroe left, only scarcely aware. 

When had this started? When? When Zach had been murdered? Had it begun when all his failures and worries had begun to mount up? Further back, when he had decided to take power? When he diablerized Garcia? And what did it mean if he turned to his sire in moments of weakness? Was the transformation inevitable? Was it who he truly was?

It sickened him. For decades, Fowler had bonded and tortured him. Now, more than half a century later, Fowler had the privilege of living in his head —

In his Beast.

All childer became their sires. 

Ventrue had always been right.  _ Blood will out _ .

Monroe was a Ventrue, no different from any other. A thin veneer of lipservice to honour and dignity that covered a corrupted black soul. He had held so tightly for so long to the idea that he was different.

He had diablerized a soul. He had slaughtered and salted Anaheim. He had sold kindred he didn’t know to a hunter. He himself had killed innocent kindred. He had killed a human child — something he had swore he would never do again. Why? To maintain an advantage over his enemies, to bolster his ego, to solidify his power, to settle a score.

The clan was a loss. And he was part of it.

A thousand things, hand-waved in the moment with excuses, drowned him. Together, they were inexcusable.

Monroe hadn’t heard the Beast’s voice for so long. For once, the Beast’s voice and his inner voice were one and the same. The Beast didn’t trouble him, because they had agreed upon actions to take.

What gave him the right?

Jan had asked him that question scathingly. Monroe insisted he took it, that there was no higher authority to answer to. He was dead wrong. Charlie accused him of forgetting his people.  _ They _ were his higher authority, but no one — as he had often lamented of Anarch domains — no one held him responsible.

He had forgotten.

If Jan tired of him, if the Anarchs howled for his blood, his childer would follow him. He was beholden to them. He needed them — in many ways, more than they needed him. They were his future. Hawthorne knew what was happening to him and, most chillingly, she hadn’t seemed bothered. 

And Lloyd.

Monroe blinked and came back to. He was… somewhere still in the residential neighbourhood north of Hollywood. Common, nice houses. And he looked a mess. Bloody tears soaked his shirt. His hair was still wet from the shower. He felt half crazed. He stumbled over his feet and slid against a palm tree.

The worst sound in the universe jolted him to sanity.

His cellphone rang.

He was about to dismiss it when he recognised the number. He answered it with trembling hands.

“Ritter told me you are on a walk,” said Jan calmly.

“Did he?” asked Monroe.

“He’s caught me in a charitable mood, Matthew. And so have you.”

As the silence dragged on, he understood Jan wanted him to ask. He wanted to know how low Monroe had fallen.

“Help me,” he whispered.

Jan wanted a location. Monroe found a street corner and sat on the curb, waiting. It was the longest ten minutes of the last one hundred and fifty-nine years. Self loathing became a new heartbeat. He almost didn’t realise when Jan’s car arrived and the door opened in front of him.

Monroe crawled in and didn’t bother hiding the horror he felt. It echoed in his faraway eyes, the weakness in his limbs, the bow of his head.

The car drove on for minutes.

“What did you do?” asked Jan. 

Monroe stared at his clasped hands. There were no words. As he contemplated the admission, he felt an unfamiliar burning behind his eyes. He opened and shut his mouth but found no words to put in it.

Jan did not say anything, nor did he move to comfort.

Slowly, so slowly he scarcely realised it, tears rolled down his face. They seemed to give permission, of a sort, and Monroe felt himself shatter. Any breath he took to try and explain himself left him soundless. Once he had begun, he couldn’t stop himself. Composure danced out of his reach.

Jan stayed as unmoving as a stone, though he put a hand on Monroe’s shoulder when he doubled over.

“What line did you refuse to cross?” he asked again.

Monroe forced himself to steady. “I would not abuse my childe.” A bitter ironic smile bit his lips. “No. I suppose I have. But… I wouldn’t physically harm him.”

“What a good line,” mused Jan, staring out the window. “Have you understood yet, what I’ve been hoping you’ll learn?”

“We are all Beasts.”

Monroe felt Jan’s irritated glare. “No. Wrong. We are  _ influenced _ by our Beasts, but we do not have to obey. We can turn our backs to them, master them, even.” His voice softened. “I understand the need to place blame elsewhere, but the Beast is the most human thing there is. Pride. Hunger. Domination.”

“Azalea…” The very topic felt forbidden, especially next to a Camarilla archon. But Jan was so much more and so much less than that. “She offered to put me on the Path of Honourable Accord.”

Jan removed his hand from his shoulder. Monroe couldn’t raise his eyes but he felt Jan’s mind work. “Via Regalis,” he said unwillingly. “If you’ve need, I will orchestrate a very quiet mentor.”

“Humanity has failed me.”

“No.  _ You _ have failed  _ it _ ,” said Jan without compassion. 

The words hit Monroe harder than if Jan had Dominated him to pull his fangs out. It left a painful hollow in his chest. He had taken his worst impulses and not questioned them. He had made the decision and, each and every time, chosen to turn his back.

“Yes,” he agreed, as fresh tears retraced their paths and threatened his breath. “I have.”

“Are you surprised you have the capacity for such actions?” asked Jan. “Vengeance, brutality, cruelty, and the like?”

“No.”

“No,” he repeated, satisfied. “Tell me, then, what will you do now? Now, that you know you are not immune to the corruption of our Beast?”

Monroe wiped his new tears away and, heedless, wiped them on his pants. He shrugged wordlessly, but Jan persisted, repeating himself. 

“Seattle,” he said blithely. “Crawl in a dark hole. Wait for sunrise.” 

“Were you always such a melodramatic coward or is this a new development?” demanded Jan. “Tell me, when you leave this car tonight,  _ what will you do _ ?”

And, so, Monroe did the only thing he had ever been good at. He thought. Seattle. Not out of shame, but out of good intentions. LA would be better off without him. His troubles began once he had achieved a position of influence. Still, he couldn’t leave without notice. Even if he chose to remove himself, he needed to secure its safety as far as he could. The thought pulled him up short.

Who?

Ashley, though a first choice, had sown too much bad blood in his decades. He didn’t have the disposition to mediate conflict and, in fact, was largely disliked, feared, and mistrusted.

Rubio remained too much of an outsider, as well as the Hollowmen. Gary Golden would be relieved to not have to deal with topsiders. Monroe couldn’t leave his land to Barty, knowing how the Anarchs would refuse the rule. Maybe even violently. 

Who, else, was of an age to lead? Abrams, who was just as stubbornly egotistical as Nines and would join with him in a pitiful war against both Camarilla princes. Civil war would tear the Anarchs apart, set LA at odds again.

Some, surely, wouldn’t follow him. Like the Barony of Angels before it, Switzerland would collapse. An Anarch wasteland. The Middle Kingdom would swallow Downtown, as Nines turned his eye from it, and then Switzerland.

Monroe thought of the sword Jan had charged him with. Jan had taken the place his sire should’ve had and designated him as fit to rule. Jan endured Monroe’s tears and delivered his blunt words because he knew. He knew Monroe would find the answer. And loathe it.

“I can’t leave,” said Monroe quietly. “When I get out of this car, I am going back home, and no one will know anything different.”

He was chained to his people — or he should’ve been. He needed to relearn the feeling, to find a way to be worthy of the duty set before him.

Jan nodded, satisfied. 

Monroe sat still, unable to meet the archon in the eye. The very position made shame rise in him. Not only for his actions and disrespect, but the wetness he still felt on his face.

“I’ve tried… so hard,” he whispered. He thought of Charlie, thin and frightened at Greystone, of Azalea bowing to Orion, of unearned mercy shown to the dangerous appearances of Harper and Hawthorne, of the threats eliminated before any could suffer. “And… I’m still here. I still ended up here.”

“You lost your path,” said Jan, more gently than he had before. “You will find it again. If there is one thing I know, there is always a way back.”

“How can I know, when I’m on the right one?” He winced as he acknowledged the tears, wiping them.

“Find who you need to be, for yourself. Listen to your people, yourself, your advisors. You’ve lived among Anarchs too long. Your people need safety and sustenance. All else is secondary. They do not care what you lose to achieve that for them. Yet, they rely on you and will be the very last to know when you have fallen.”

Monroe found himself smiling. “Implying I haven’t.”

Jan glanced from the window back to him, surprised. “You have stumbled. It’s an important moment in a promising Cainite’s life. Do you know when I had committed to our path?”

He shrugged.

“When you told me, with full honesty,  _ I don’t want to be prince,” _ said Jan reverentially. “Ventru’s Beast has influenced many of our clan’s best — and many humans, as well. We are not our failures.”

Jan gently pulled Monroe’s face to turn towards him. Jan’s steady blue eyes caught and held his. A thumb brushed away an errant tear.

“Matthew,” he said. “Humans, for the most part, have an inner desire to treat each other with dignity. We are not humans. Time and tragedy tend to burn humanity out of us. Of which, kindred have an inexhaustible supply. Do not mistake mercy and compassion for weakness, however. Violence begets violence. Murder begets murder. To meet our world with anything greater is a supreme act of strength.”

“I should’ve listened to you when you first warned me where I was going,” said Monroe in a broken voice.

Jan nodded. “We have centuries of regrets, but if we dwell on them, we will be here until sunrise. You have learned your lesson. You will listen to me now.”

Monroe agreed. The medicine was cruel in Jan’s patience, but liquid fire as he swallowed it. Still, as he thought of Lloyd back home being comforted by Hawthorne, he wondered if the cost would ever have been worth it.


	46. The Oldest Story

Elysium was beginning to be far less fun. Though Zari couldn’t escape it entirely, she also had to entertain Owaine’s amusements. The blustery Ventrue seemed to know instinctively how to try her patience. Even claiming business with the Ambles, her technical Blood family, didn’t deter him. Zari had glued herself to his arm, as well as his fanciful lies and stories, his snub insults of the Anarchs, and racist compliments. A few more nights, she told herself. And then she could have him commit suicide by LaCroix. And…

What? And LaCroix would solidify his position as prince? She would do as she was told? Did that elitist dick actually  _ Dominate _ her? Zari scoured her memory. No. That wasn’t it.

Mercurio waited for her when she managed to leave elysium. He always did. A few blocks down the road, quiet and unobtrusive. She slid in the backseat and, several streets later, crawled into the front and kissed him.

His nose wrinkled against hers. “You smell like him.”

Zari grimaced as she slid back into her seat. His hand followed her, resting on her knee. “Is that how you compliment a lady?”

“Does my lady need compliments?” he asked, surprised. “I thought she knew how beautiful, and smart, and—”

“Drive, Romeo,” she said playfully, but there was little spunk in her voice. In the car, hidden from the judging eyes of elysium, a bone-deep weariness threatened her. The silence let her retreat inwards to what was left of her life.

Mercurio heard it. 

“ _ 50 First Dates  _ is still in theatres, or we could go home and watch a movie.” He chuckled. “Not gonna lie, it’s hard to think of dates that aren’t food-related and are open late.”

Zari smiled thinly and took his hand. “An Adam Sandler movie? So boring.”

“Right, so—”

“Take me.”

The movie was just as terrible as she thought. Predictable, vaguely horrifying in an existential and unintentional way, low brow humour. Mercurio liked it, though, and Zari spent much of it just watching him. The way he smiled, and laughed, and looked back at her. It broke her heart. For the first time in a long time, she leaned into the terrible hollow feeling. In the dark theatre, she was alone among dozens, wounded and silently dying.

Zari couldn’t even find it in her to bite him when they got back home. His apartment, not hers, though they were basically the same. It was a gentleman thing, though she didn’t mind. They ended up naked in bed before Mercurio realised something was still wrong.

He rolled off her and pulled her close to him, as though he could squeeze out the feeling. She pushed him off and stood, unable to tolerate his touch. The words boiled in her, a pot too long on the burner.

“What’s wrong?” asked Mercurio, hurt.

Zari paced, wringing her hands. She grabbed a robe to cover her nakedness. “I’m happy,” she said desperately. “I’m happy. I — Thirty years of bad blood, I’ve reconnected with my sire’s family. I’m a member of court. I got the ear of the seneschal  _ and _ the prince.” The thought of the Voermans risked tears in her eyes. “I have friends. I have you. I have a way out, if all this Camarilla bullshit goes ugly.”

She blinked back the tears. He sat up, but didn’t stand to take her in his arms. “I’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted and more. I don’t need anyone. I can deal on my own. I have for ages. And… I… am still  _ so _ lonely,” she whispered to herself.

Her words soaked into the silence like blood into cotton.

Mercurio glanced around. “I’m right here.”

“I’ve lied to you,” she said quietly. “Not really. I just didn’t tell you and I probably should.”

Mercurio shushed her and stood to hold her. He didn’t say anything, but the quiet comforted her. The scent of cologne, of his warm skin, the promise of it. The promise that things would go okay. 

“Monroe sent me here to spy on the prince,” said Zari in a single breath.

Mercurio stiffened at the mention of LaCroix but he didn’t let her go.

“I haven’t given anything useful,” she said. “I… I don’t really have anything back there worth missing.”

He buried his face in her shoulder. “If he asks me, I have to tell him that. I’m sorry—”

“I know.” She tried to smile. It didn’t go far. She didn’t want to think what LaCroix would do to her for it. “I’ve sort of assumed that anything I tell you will get back to him.”

Mercurio held her tighter, but it was for him now, not her. “He will always have a special place,” he said bitterly. “And I’m not gay. He’s not even a friend, but I will never be able to love you more than I love him. We’ll figure it out, like I said, but you’ll be second.”

“Do you love me?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said, like it was actually just that simple. “Of course.”

“I just told you I came here to tear down your prince and destroy the court from within and you tell me you love me,” said Zari, disbelieving.

“Not my prince,” said Mercurio. “Ghouls don’t really get a vote.”

She considered him again and again. There was nothing deeper. He was kind, and honest, and earnest, and strong, and good to her. He loved her. He was boring and normal. He could smile at her when she gave him a coffee, with just the right amount of cream and sweetener, kiss her on the cheek and call her  _ sugar _ in a way that was tacky and not dirty. And, maybe, she could accept they both just had to serve the prince. It wasn’t an endorsement. It was survival.

And he loved her.

“I could love you,” admitted Zari. Her nails pathed through the coarse hair on his chest. Pomegranate Rose. “I’m scared.” She barely mouthed the words.

Mercurio’s brow fell. “Of what?”

“Being hurt.” She squeezed her eyes tight and wetness escaped her. “It was the first thing Ashley taught me and, God, I needed it then but now I’m wishing I had never met the asshole. When I had to leave my husband, my babies, he taught me to bury the feeling — any feeling I didn’t like under a mountain.” She shook her head. “And, now, the mountain’s coming down.”

He winced and took her hand. “Easy on the delicate human,” he said, prying her claws from his chest hair. She hadn’t realised she had been pulling it. He sighed. “Baby, compartmentalization is needed in this life, but you can only lock it away once it’s been dealt with.”

Zari searched herself, though she didn’t have to search hard. She had long come to terms with being undead: drinking blood, occasionally killing, doing crime, using humans.

She shut her eyes against Mercurio’s chest. “My family. I left behind two children and a husband.”

Mercurio directed them both to sit on the bed. He brushed her tears away. “Tell me about them,” he said softly.

Zari did. It was her turn to talk. The words spilled out of her, following a flood of tears. She told him about her husband, a charming man married to his job, their rom-com first meeting in the post office, their small chapel wedding. He was a carpenter and had made the cribs for their kids. Aisha had been first — an absolute angel of a baby. Never cried, rarely vomited. Noel had been the opposite, needy and demanding, but Aisha had always managed to calm him. She loved her little brother. Aisha was so good with him.

And he listened. Mercurio didn’t say a word. He sat with her, and wiped her tears, and listened.

Zari told him about how she dropped her surname — but it didn’t really matter anymore. Garcia had Embraced Aisha. Her husband was an old man. And Noel was dying.

She talked for hours, every pitiful detail and lonesome memory that she had buried and refused to endure. Her heart broke into so many pieces she didn’t know if she could put it back together.

And he listened. And he listened. And, bit by bit, he found the pieces.

Mercurio shook his head. “Don’t tell me how much Noel’s gonna miss. Tell me about how he made you laugh.”

“Blue rabbit cakes,” she said at once. A wet snort found its way out. “These stupid box mix pancakes. They had a rabbit on the front and I made them with blueberries. He’d hop around with ears.” Her smile wobbled but she put up her pointer fingers above her head.

Mercurio kissed her forehead. “What else?”

She told him about how Aisha refused to draw with anything but crayons in shades of purple, pizza Wednesday, and the way her husband called her sugar. Aisha used to hate having her hair braided, yelling, but she would relax after the first two braids. Zari remembered the last time she braided her hair. For Aisha, her heart was just as heavy. The girl was alive, fanged, in Hollywood — not a twenty minute drive — but she was as far away as Noel.

Noel. Noel. Noel.

“I throw myself into my work, so I don’t have to think about… things,” said Zari, torn. “Here, there’s  _ always _ more. More plots, more schemes, more things to think about.”

“It’s not a crime to need your job,” said Mercurio. “And it’s not a crime to regret leaving.”

“Regrets are for people who had other choices,” she said resentfully.

He took his hand out of hers again and put it around her waist. “You’re right, you’re right.”

“I need to see him again,” she said. She leaned into his shoulder. “To say goodbye.”

Mercurio stiffened and she could hear him think. “If you need to, I’ll support you.”

Zari thought about it for a long time. Maybe seeing Noel after burying it for so long would only rip open the old wound, leave it raw and bloody — and not in a cute way. She knew the boy from a distance. The man was a stranger to her. Best, maybe, to let it go. Scars needed time to heal.

Zari had been torn from her human chance to be a mother and, ever since, run from it. Noel had a wife now, boys who would miss him. But she had brought the boy into the world and she would be there when he left it.

“Yeah.” She barely mouthed the word, nodding thickly.

Mercurio found their clothes on the floor, separating the articles, and got dressed. He seemed to only have one outfit: a slim navy pantsuit, worn with a paisley pink shirt, the collar popped over, and a gold necklace and watch. From the almost-sexual and emotional encounter, his hair was a mess. Rugged red-brown, almost greasy with product. His face belonged to no movie star, but he had a strong jaw and smiling blue eyes. They smiled now.

“Whatcha looking at?” he asked.

“Thank you,” she said, because there was so much more to say and not enough eternity to say it in.

Zari dressed again and provided directions to the hospital. The quiet drive was pregnant with unknowns. She had followed Noel’s case. While he awoke from the coma, he had returned home, only to come back to his room weeks later for end-of-life care. Part of Zari feared he would recognise her, but a much bigger part worried he wouldn’t. 

The hospital was as lonely and aching as she remembered. Dark shops in the lobby gave way to glaring fluorescents and overly-cheerful posters. Zari took Mercurio’s hand. It didn’t help, but it didn’t hurt.

A nurse at the desk on the fifth floor glanced up as their elevator opened. She frowned. It was too late at night. “How can I help you?”

“I… Noel Adeyemi,” she said. “I’m family, but I don’t got, really, any time.” She floundered for excuses but felt the Presence fizzle in her hands.

The nurse typed the name into her computer.

The wheeze of machines, lights, and beeps from down the hall wove into Zari. She knew she would never forget that soul crushing sound.

“He’s been in and out of consciousness,” said the nurse, reading Noel’s file. “But you’re welcome to sit with him. Room 514, just down, to the left.”

Mercurio thanked the nurse. Zari was too busy in her own head.

As they turned down the corridor, he said, “I was ready to Dominate it out of her. Why d’you think she just let us visit a patient at one in the morning?”

“I’m sure family always wanna be here,” said Zari faintly. “When it’s time.”

It sombered Mercurio, as he apologized, but she ignored it. She couldn’t take her eyes and ears off of the other rooms. Quiet, but suffocatingly so, she felt like they were the only two living people in the world. The world died at the automatic doors in the lobby. Behind each door was some other family’s nightmare. Zari almost wished that Noel’s wife had been in his room, to meet her and share in the pain. But it was empty and dark. The machines had been put to sleep, so even their glow had been muted.

Mercurio dusted off his jacket and he sat. 

Noel looked thinner than the last time she had seen him. His hair had gone uncut, a little wild, and his dark skin had an unhealthy cast to it. Almost vampiric. A nurse had pulled the blankets up and he slept — or was unconscious? — easily, breathing long and deep.

Zari sat on the edge of the bed.

Instantly, Noel startled awake.

Mercurio jumped. “Shit.”

“Janae?” he asked dimly. He blinked in the darkness. In the quiet, his heart rate skyrocketed.

“Yes, baby,” said Zari. She patted his chest and he settled back down, under the covers. “It’s okay.”

Noel took her hand and he leaned back. “Sorry, girl. I… I just guess I fell asleep. What’s the score? Giants and Raptors?”

Zari didn’t know a lot about sports, but she knew there was no TV in this room and she was pretty sure the Giants and the Raptors played different sports. Noel was confident, but there was a small slur on his words.

“Fifteen to eighteen, buddy,” said Mercurio without missing a beat.

“Wow. Close game. Glad I didn’t miss it.” He chuckled. “Where’d the homies go?”

“It’s… halftime,” said Zari, taking her cue from Mercurio. “They ate all the snacks, so they figured they’d walk to the corner store.”

“Told you,” muttered Noel. He raised a hand. “Told you we didn’t buy enough.”

“Next time, we’ll get more,” she said thickly. She stood before she could start crying again. “I’m gonna get a drink, gonna leave you with…”

Mercurio stood. “It’s Mark.”

Noel nodded and reached out a hand and smile. “Nice to meet you, brother.”

“Mark,” she repeated. “Is that your real name?”

Mercurio snorted. “What’s real anyways? I work for vampires.”

Noel laughed. “Oh, man, you should hear what Ty’s gotta say about our boss. We all work for stinking fucking bloodsuckers in America.”

Mercurio settled down and started going on about plays in the Giants versus Raptors game. Zari had to leave. She wanted to get a breath of fresh air — except her lungs didn’t breathe. And the corridor was almost worse. Layers and layers of an impersonal hell of humans wasting away. Death, more clinical and inevitable than anything a vampire could dream up.

She paced, uncertain. It was a bad idea to come. It just all seemed so helpless. There was nothing here to do for him, no last sterling apology or declaration of love, no suspicious questions. No pleas for the Embrace.

Zari had made it back to the front desk. The nurse glanced up with a world-weary look in her eye.

“Did he wake up?” she asked.

Zari nodded, wincing. “We didn’t mean to—”

“No harm done,” she assured her. “At this stage, sometimes comfort and time with him is more important, and he sleeps most of the day anyway.”

Nameless, wordless concerns, alien to Zari but familiar to the nurse, danced on her tongue.

“Sometimes, they forget,” said the nurse kindly. “A brain tumour like this, things get a little mixed around. We’ve found it best to entertain the fantasies. It causes the least amount of distress, that way.”

“My man’s talking with him about a Giants and Raptors game,” said Zari with a disbelieving laugh.

The nurse smiled. “I bet that’s a hell of a game Noel’s watching. Did he call you Aisha?”

Zari blinked back. “No. No, he called me Janae.”

“His wife’s come a lot, with their little boys, but I’m sorry. I’m sure having him remind you of more tragedy in the family is the last thing you need,” said the nurse.

“Does… Does he ask about Aisha a lot?” asked Zari softly.

The nurse gave a pitying look. “It’s not uncommon. A lot of patients with cognitive issues ask for diseased spouses twenty years after. It’s only been a few months for his sister, I understand.”

Except Aisha wasn’t really dead.

That, at least, Zari could do. She could get Aisha to come to the game.

Zari paced back down the hall and dialed Aisha’s number. The girl answered at the fifth ring. A cacophony of music and shouts blew up behind her.

“How’s it going?” Aisha half-shrieked in a sing-songy tone.

“I’m at the hospital,” said Zari.

“Cool, cool,” drawled Aisha. She smacked her lips. “Hey, why —” She giggled and pushed someone away. “Quiet! Look, we’re up in the hills tonight. This party is  _ tight _ . I got more Black Eyed Peas than I do fangs to put in them.”

“I’m at the hospital,” she repeated. “With Noel.”

The name sent Aisha silent.

“Aisha—”

“You’re at the hospital,” she said again in a very different voice. She sounded like a scared little girl, suddenly a fifth her age.

“Noel’s not doing well,” said Zari. “I’m talking with him now. You… You should come over. One time, for all of us to be together. Like…” But she had started the thought, so she had to finish it. “Like a family.”

“Like a family,” repeated Aisha, awestruck.

“Are you a woman or a parrot?” she snapped. “Yes, like a family.”

“Like a family,” she said, a little harder. Maybe if she had been sober or not so used to numbing herself, she would’ve been angry. Swans, generally, weren’t angry. They were happy. It was a gift, as Ashley saw it. Maybe it was. 

“He thinks he’s at home, with his wife and boys, watching a sports game,” said Zari. She felt herself close to tears and brushed one traitorous one away. “We’re just all spending some time together. I’ll be here all night, baby, whenever you wanna say goodbye. You don’t need to come here alone.” She glanced down the corridor. The machines wheezed. “I don’t think I could.”

“Noel,” said Aisha. She put every ounce of longing and humanity she still had into his name. Soon, her human life would just be a bad dream. It couldn’t have been long enough, though. 

“He asks for you. All the time. He wants you to come see him.”

Aisha hung up.

Zari couldn’t help the wave of disgust that washed over her. It was hard to come here, to face him, to say goodbye — but Noel deserved it. Aisha owed it to herself to have closure.

Closure? Is that what Zari was after here?

She dialed Ashley’s number by memory. He picked up right away.

“They always said your mother’s the first person to make you cry,” he drawled. He sounded like he was at the same party, but the blasting background noise softened as he found somewhere quieter.

“Maybe your mother,” said Zari.

A door shut and Ashley sighed. There was quiet on his end. “I thought Westside was too dangerous to call me,” he said. It wasn’t an accusation, but it was in the neighbourhood. “I thought you were worried these high-brow Cam bastards had, like, tapped the networks.”

Zari still wouldn’t put it past LaCroix.

“I found something I’m more worried about.”

“You know you should forget,” said Ashley gently. “You will. One night, your family’s just gonna be a foggy memory that has no bearing on you. Speed up the process a little and spare yourself — and Aisha — this pain. It’s not worth it.”

Zari heard Mercurio still going on about Giants and Raptors players. Noel interjected, sometimes with a slurred stutter. But he was excited. He was happy. Sometimes, he laughed.

“It’s not,” she said in a small voice.

“I’m not saying a party,” said Ashley. “I can ditch. We can go out, you and me, we can paint the town red. Enjoy ourselves, for once. Lord knows we deserve it. Or, you can come up to the hills. You can dance and forget yourself, with Blake and Nita. I’m sure I can wrangle up a spicy vessel or ten for you. Whatever you need.”

An apology was on the tip of her tongue, flaccid consolations for Delilah, but Ashley wouldn’t want or need it. He wanted her home, safe.

“You can’t give me what I need,” she said in a thick voice. “You know I won’t come over.”

Ashley sighed. The door opened and a tinny air of music and drunken conversation spilled out. “I know, my love. I know, but I had to offer. Take care, Zari.”

He hung up, but Zari couldn’t bring herself to take the phone from her ear. The way he had said her name, with such wistful tenderness. It was the oldest story. Someone had to leave first. And she couldn’t. He did her the last favour of hanging up. What was there left to say?

As though in a dream, Zari pocketed her phone and returned to her son’s hospital bed, resigned and determined, but hopeful, as she faced her future.


	47. Vows

Edwin Wolfsbane snarled and slammed a fist on the map table. Jack was expecting someone a bit… more impressive-looking. His hair was a bit  _ Wolfman  _ but he was kinda short. He also dressed like a cowboy and, while his clothes looked antique, the whole getup was more costume than anything. Still, supposedly, this was the man all Anarchs were supposed to fear.

Jack had asked Monroe to set the meeting fast, before Orion or Azalea could get wind that a strategy table was coming. It was exactly the nightmare he feared it would be. Jack, unusual for an Anarch, had mastered the skill of shutting his mouth. Orion would’ve been skewered.

He had to admit, though, Camarilla sure knew how to keep up appearances. The Grey-Pacific gentlemen’s club hit every mark Jack had ever heard of the Tower. Exclusive, disgustingly rich, one-percenter garbage.

“I  _ told _ you, Jan, we’re taking Pasadena first,” demanded Edwin.

Jan Pieterzoon, the Ventrue archon and most Ventrue-looking Ventrue Jack could ever imagine, didn’t even flinch. “And I told you, sir, that you would be paid in due time. The Sabbat is my concern more than a loner Ventrue.”

“You should probably pay your generals,” said Nines with a small smirk.

Jan glanced up. If looks could kill.

Barty snorted audibly. Jack struggled to keep the smile off his face. Already, Nines had figured out the status quo and enjoyed prodding it. Isaac Abrams, for the most part, stayed back, a hateful eye on the whole table.

“If we keep it quiet, Pasadena could give us an advantage the Sabbat won’t see coming,” said Monroe fairly. As Jan turned his glare to him, he tacked on, “Sir.”

“I like these ones,” said Edwin with a stage whisper and a snarl. “Pasadena was  _ mine _ —”

“Before Jeremy MacNeil swore to kill you personally,” said Damsel with a casual shrug.

Looks seemed like they were gonna fast progress to something a lot worse. Jack left his position behind Monroe and side-stepped.

“Anarchs, remain civil or I will have to have you forcibly removed,” droned Jan. He readjusted a map without glancing at Damsel or Edwin.

“Hey, man, you asked us here,” said Nines. “I got other places I could be.”

“You would not be forcibly removed from the room,” said Monroe tensely, “but something rather more permanent.”

Nines bared his fangs and laid clawed hands on the table. “Is that a threat?”

“Monroe,” snapped Jan with more force than he had the entire meeting. “That’s enough. I do not need my words translated to the baron. He has the intelligence to discover my meaning for himself. He is our honoured guest.”

Nines looked like, if his stomach still worked, he might’ve vomited. Damsel tensed, uncertain if there was gonna be a brawl. Silently, Jack pled with his eyes for her to stop. This wasn’t a fight anyone would win. The Tower wouldn’t let a good natured brawl go unanswered.

As Nines leaned on the table, his shirt had pulled up in the back, and Jack spotted a gun. Idiot. 

“There’s no need to kill David Gerred,” said Nines shortly. “He’s a good man.”

“Will he hand me Pasadena?” asked Edwin with a curt nod. “No.”

“He’s Ventrue,” said Monroe, as if it said everything. Nines gave him a suspicious look. “Send Barty — half Anarch, half Ventrue.”

“Shit, I’ll do it,” offered Barty. “Give me twenty minutes and another bottle of whiskey and this can all smooth over.”

Jan nodded thoughtfully, then shuffled the maps to one of East LA. “Historically in California, Sabbat have been predominately Tzimisce, though rarely koldun sorcerers, as well as Brujah-antitribu. Therefore—”

“How do you know that?” asked Damsel.

Monroe didn’t gasp, but he shut his eyes briefly and groaned.

Jan turned slowly to Damsel. There was no indignified rage like Edwin had, but she crumbled regardless. “I am presiding archon of the Camarilla in the New World. It is my business to know such things. Have you any other questions?”

Damsel shook her head. Below the sight of the table, Jack spied Nines take her hand comfortingly. Barty whistled low and chuckled.

“Therefore,” continued Jan as though nothing had happened, “the battle will be determined by martial force, rather than magical strength. I would be unsurprised if Monroe has more Lasombra than there are in East LA.”

“Which brings us to a count,” said Edwin with a greedy smile.

“Count of what?” asked Nines.

“Your fighting men. I need to coordinate the battle.”

“You can’t declare war without a Dux Bellorum,” said Abrams, breaking his silence. Since everyone shook hands at the start, he hadn’t said boo.

“A  _ what _ ?” asked Nines.

As the old rivals locked eyes, Jack felt like he understood another piece of Monroe’s strategy. So long as he kept Abrams and Nines apart, the two old guard Anarchs wouldn’t have the chance to find common ground. Keeping them enemies managed to keep peace.

“A… war lord,” said Monroe. “Declared by an archon or justicar, to lead the forces of the Camarilla against its enemies. In short…” He raised a hand to indicate Jan.

“I’ve declared Edwin Wolfsbane.”

Nines’ eyes flickered around the table. “If you’re supposed to lead the Camarilla, you got no right to be leading free Anarchs. I thought we were fighting  _ together _ . Should’ve known better than to trust a Ventrue.” He spat in Barty’s general direction.

Edwin lurched and Barty restrained him by the shoulders.

“Calm,” said Jan indifferently, and Edwin pulled himself back from the frenzy. Jan dabbed a glob of spit off his map.

Barty patted Edwin on the chest.

“We are fighting together,” said Barty encouragingly to Nines. “No one wants to be the feature of a Sabbat Blood Feast next week. You lead your people, Monroe leads his own, and I lead mine. Here, we work together to make a plan—”

“Back up,” said Monroe. He leaned across the table to better find Barty’s eyes. “ _ You’re _ fighting?”

This, too, seemed to be news to Jan, who raised his eyes from the maps of the city.

“Don’t take that tone with the prince,” said Edwin stiffly, but Barty gave him a shove.

“Why shouldn’t I fight? You are.”

“I was in New York.”

“And I was in San Francisco.”

“That was the Tower, this is the Sabbat.” Monroe’s voice struggled to keep level. “I know it’s important to you, to be at the front lines with your people — it’s important to me, too — but—”

“But what?” dared Barty.

Monroe grimaced.

“It’s a terrible idea,” said a female voice.

The men turned as one to spy the doors to the room, previously locked and guarded by suited ghouls, now open. A beautiful woman stepped in. She wore a dainty white dress, pulled below her breasts. It made her look like a Greecian statue. The walls seemed to glow as she passed them by.

“Your Highness. My honourable archon. Glorious Dux Bellorum. Your Baronship. My… captain.” She curtsied to them each in turn, before turning back to Barty with large innocent eyes. “It is a wretched idea, sir. The Sabbat are an uncontrollable force of chaos and destruction. It is best left to those brave kindred—”

“Shut up, stupid woman,” demanded Barty. “I am the prince and just as brave and capable of setting Tzimisce on fire and taking heads as any one of these rat bastards!”

“Barty,” started Monroe, putting a hand on him.

“I meant no offence, Your Highness,” said the woman. Her face drew into an exaggerated expression of concern. “I only fear for the well-being of my prince.”

There was no Presence, aside from an accidental low-lying leak that Jack felt come out of the archon and the woman. Elders. They were a whole other breed of vampire. It wasn’t cajoling or influencing, and nothing as subtle as Nines, just alluring. 

This was an influence of something else. Barty’s ego.

“We will take all the precautions, Madame Seneschal,” said Edwin after a hesitation.

“Your Highness, I can only counsel caution,” said Jan sternly. “There is no weakness in acknowledging that the strength of a foe requires specialised—”

“And, forgive me,  _ Your Baronship _ ,” said Barty sarcastically, “but this isn’t specialized. This is giving every available kindred a sword and a hand grenade and flushing out those motherfuckers.”

As Monroe exchanged uneven looks with the seneschal, Jan, and Edwin, Jack felt he understood the hierarchy a little better. Nines and Abrams glanced to each other. Barty only glared pointedly at the seneschal, until she dismissed herself pleasantly. She had done what she had come to do. What she had done, Jack wasn’t sure. It was a mighty long shot to kill a prince in a battle, especially if Wolfsbane was looking after him. Unless, she knew something.

The only thing Jack knew was that he knew nothing.

The archon managed to direct planning to milking local information out of Nines. A lot could be said against him, but, man, Nines knew his city. He knew where the Sabbat kept safehouses, where their big-shots hid out, what human gangs and businesses the Sabbat favoured. 

They brought out a Tremere, who brightened Barty’s mood considerably, and she with her apprentices conducted a few spells to confirm things. Jack stepped closer to get a better view. Mostly Tzimisce and Brujah — over a hundred. They confirmed Nines’ information. Jan’s precious maps became marked up as strategy began to take form. In light of the seneschal’s warning, Nines didn’t want his men anywhere near the Camarilla in battle.

“Are you suspecting us of treachery?” said Edwin, outraged.

Jan calmed him and dismissed the notion. Soon, they had organized a dozen close hits, supported in daytime by ghouls. No one had to risk their licks with others. Nines’ Anarchs, Abrams’ Silver Eagles, Monroe’s, and Barty’s own. Jack didn’t know Abrams had any force really, since Tinseltown got purged. He must’ve been busy, Embracing and training. 

The meeting — the first one, at least — had been dismissed shortly after.

Everyone kept thinking it. No one was saying it.  _ This isn’t a war _ . It was a purge. Jack didn’t know which one was worse. The last time he had been in any serious gang fights, was when Nines told the Last Round to wipe out a gang that was a danger to Downtown. Jack still doubted they had been. He couldn’t remember what they had done, but they had pissed off Nines. It was the longest hour of his life.

The drive to LAX to pick up the Hollowmen had been bad enough.

Disneyland had been worse. 

More than anything, he hated how much he loved it. Well, not him. The Beast. So, Jack supposed it was him — just not any him he wanted to be.

In the days before the attack, Jack found himself touching the necklace Orsay had made him, to keep him safe. The reminder, having someone back home, even if it wasn’t a lover, steadied him. Orsay and the Hollowmen attended the other meetings, providing an inside look at the Sabbat. Ryuko wasn’t with them. Jack didn’t know if that was a good sign or not. Good, probably. The Camarilla didn’t know about the domain’s resident mage. Monroe didn’t volunteer the information either.

Plans straightened up. Mechanically, like this was all some theoretical game, Jack started to participate in meetings. Private ones, in Medusa. The Hollowmen, Reapers, Deathsingers, Jack, and Monroe. Send in some rats, to scout out. Rats can do a lotta damage. And no need for a smoke bomb, if we got Lasombra. And, what about those thinblood Alchemists? There was no way to keep them secret anymore. 

It didn’t feel real. None of it did. 

Even when Monroe told him Barty had talked with Pasadena, who handed over his land without argument to Edwin Wolfsbane. In two nights, the Valley Camarilla would attack — a day attack with ghouls bleeding into a night assault. As they fled south, Monroe would meet them. As they continued east, Nines would block their escape and prevent any reenforcements.

It didn’t feel real. Even when the night came.

He made a cursory lap over the area. With a bird’s eye, Jack picked out the warehouses. Supposedly, they were going to bring them to ruin. He returned to the car, a parking lot a few blocks away. The Reapers paced like trapped animals. Azalea and Monroe sat on a bench, quiet. Orion had refused to take the cocktail of thinblood pills, but he reconsidered his baggie.

Jack sat on the hood of Monroe’s car, cross-legged as he lost his wings.

“The Hollowmen and Deathsingers are already in position,” said Jack.

Monroe nodded to indicate he heard. “And LAPD?”

Jack winced. It had been the only time he had spoken up at the Camarilla meetings, to insist on no human casualties. “Disneyland’s on fire again. You can see it from the sky. The station’s deserted.”

“What about Midnight?” asked Orion. “Did you see her?”

“I didn’t, but she’s probably in the car, heading to their location,” said Jack weakly. “Sorry.”

Orion tipped the baggie of pills into his mouth and swallowed, coughing hard as he forced them down. Monroe steadied him.

“My boys are there, too,” said Monroe in a low voice. “Justin. Lloyd. They’re probably safer with the Hollowmen than we are now.”

Orion nodded and straightened himself. 

Jack found himself reaching for his necklace. Orsay was the only Hollowman not on the field tonight. He sat next to Monroe on the bench. “Any inspiring speeches, captain?”

Monroe didn’t even smile. “I can’t do that before battle. Jan can.”

“Any advice?”

“Don’t die,” said Monroe. At first, Jack chuckled, his dismal spirits lightened, but he continued, “Disengage a fight. Call for help if you need it. Run. Reposition. Be cautious. Fight smart. Don’t be a hero.”

Jack considered. “Practical. Maybe inspiring if you squint.”

“I’ve been giving kids that advice since I was breathing,” he said bitterly. “It never helps.” Monroe’s gaze landed on the Reapers. “Everyone has their way of prepping for battle.”

Again and again that word.  _ Battle. _ Maybe Anarchs had the right of it, letting off steam with street fights before the pressure cooker could come up with something as terrible as war. Still, Jack followed Monroe’s eye. Orion lapsed again into anxious silence. Azalea muttered something that might’ve been a prayer. Crow paced. Slater sheathed and unsheathed a machete. 

Time slowly ran out. 

“You’d think fighting comes naturally to the Beast,” mused Jack.

“Oh, it does, but we are not Beasts. We are influenced by them.”

Jack smiled gently. “I like that.”

Monroe’s eyes stayed dark and distant. “A very smart acquaintance of mine told me that.”

Monroe’s cell phone rang. Jack had been with him enough to recognise the Pavlovian twitch as he answered it. The call lasted moments. He sprung up with new purpose. As he had promised Jack, there was no grand speech, to invigorating Rant. He simply stood and said, “It’s time.”

The Valley Camarilla had finished the bulk of their assault.

Jack followed, a curious empty pit in his chest. Sometimes, being a vampire had its advantages. He didn’t faint or vomit or even shake. As the Brujah got in the car with Azalea and Monroe, Jack and Crow found wings and took to the skies.

The warehouse looked no different than twenty minutes ago. A simple cement building, rolling steel garages. A massive industrial factory decades ago, now a blight on the landscape. All dark. Seemingly empty. 

Jack and Crow came far ahead of the others and, as Crow transformed, he hurried to find the stash of explosives Jack had hidden. Rubio could find anything, anytime. With this much warning, he could’ve supplied every militia west of Montana.

Crow filled his arms and bit into a stick of dynamite. His eyes had a crazed gleam reflected in the dim streetlights. “You ready?” he asked, voice muffled.

Jack remembered in images. A flash of fire. A fuze ticking down with sparks. Blinking red numbers counting down. The building shuddered and the steel garages blew inwards. Hell poured out. Szlachta. A dozen, at least. Once humans or licks, the Tzimisce had flesh-crafted them into walking horrors. Bone strained under the skin, breaking through in plated armor and unnatural claws. They charged on four, six, eight legs, bulbous bodies straggling. 

Crow took to his wings again and disappeared up the roof.

Jack gave himself over to the cougar and whimpered. He lingered beside the car as the others exited.

Bottles of fire flew over his head, smashing on the ground or in the szlatchas’ faces. The Beast clawed up Jack’s throat, but he had tapped out on fear. Szlatcha screamed piteously, but the flame devoured them. Those szlachta who had avoided the fire found themselves pushed by the deep black shadows. Singed, they yelled and tried to pat themselves out.

Grenades came next, shaking the already weakened building and shredding what remained of the poor flesh-crafted monsters. 

And, then he smelled it. Blood. The Beast smelled with his nose and charged. There were still vampires to kill. Jack growled and leapt into the warehouse.

The powerful taste of vitae, the crunch of bones, and chewy rips of entrails. A shotgun blast caught him in the side and threw him off a Sabbat, but the darkness came alive. Crow dropped from the ceiling as a black bear and the ground shook. Guns glared against the unnatural blackness. Machetes turned gold in flashes of fire. Magical chants interrupted by shotguns. Pleas for mercy dissolved into screams. Animal hisses of rage turned guttural. 

As Jack turned, growling, from his last kill, his paws slipped on bloody and ashen viscera. There was no one left. Nothing remained but scattered bones, puddles of blood, and ash. The floor of a slaughterhouse. The Sabbat were dead. Jack almost wished he could’ve seen their faces — apologized, maybe.

Slater rode Crow around, making a fresh lap of victory with a jovial howl. Orion sat at the base of a rickety metal staircase, head bowed. Azalea abandoned her shadowy supports and hung over her last victim, fangs in his neck.

Jack limped from the building. He couldn’t gather enough of a human mind to think. To even transform. Monroe leaned against the wall outside, eyes shut. He peered at Jack, exhausted.

“Are you hurt?”

Jack shook his head and wretched. He probed his feline teeth and found chunks of undead flesh, strings of vein and tougher tendons. The gore spat out.

Monroe slid against the wall to the ground. Jack pressed against him and grunted. A hand landed on his shoulder.

“I know,” he said.

But he didn’t. Jack knew this fog, this labyrinth he sometimes worried he would never find his way out of. A Gangrel frenzy left him more beast than vampire. Something wouldn’t change back. Maybe he didn’t deserve it.

Silently, Monroe picked through Jack’s wounds. He snarled and nipped, but Monroe continued to pull the buckshot from the muscle. The metal clinked on the ground.

“You did what you had to,” said Monroe softly. “Find peace in that. There was a purpose to tonight.”

The animal mind couldn’t process the rebellion in Jack’s heart. He focused on his paws, slick with blood, and made them thumbs. He transformed slowly, deliberately, searching for what didn’t. The teeth. His teeth didn’t blunt, reshape to squares. Jagged sharp rows of canines. He picked the gore out of his teeth with a nail. They didn’t fit right in his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” said Monroe. He meant it.

Jack shrugged, but absorbed the sympathy. Maybe they would fade, in weeks. Maybe Orsay could put them right. He struggled to work his tongue and speech around them. “There is… no good reason to do that.”

He sighed. “I agree. I didn’t choose this, though.”

“You helped plan it.”

“Do you think the Sabbat would live and let live?”

It wasn’t a sneering question. Monroe wanted a different answer to it than they both knew. He hadn’t wanted to be here anymore than Jack did.

“No,” said Jack. 

In LA, there was rarely a month where East LA hadn’t picked fights with the Sabbat, destroying bases before falling back. A give-and-take that left more dead than any full assault could’ve. It was a game. Garcia had rarely been part of them, though. Nines, never. 

“How many’d you kill?” asked Jack.

Monroe settled lower against the wall and shut his eyes. Only then, Jack noticed the smear of blood on his face. Like Azalea, he had drank. Jack would’ve been surprised if Slater and Crow hadn’t. Jack himself had tasted the black lifesblood, but he hadn’t stayed to drink it.

“Too many,” said Monroe wistfully. “And not enough.”

Jack knew what he meant. He could feel it, still. The unsatisfied Beast who wanted to keep hunting, the bottomless pit of hunger that became background static. The louder it got, the more it terrified him. All he could think of was the young violent Anarchs, the hot thrill of shooting each other and the game they made out of gang wars.

He wondered if Damsel was enjoying herself tonight.

Monroe’s phone buzzed and he took another brief call. Nines’ turn.

Their night of hell was over. Nines’ and Damsel’s had only just begun.

Orion made his slow way out of the warehouse, walking like a man in a nightmare. Jack remembered the night he met the Reapers, only just escaped Edwin Wolfsbane and the purge of the Valley. The same hauntedness clung to him like cobwebs.

It took several times of Monroe calling his name before Orion turned, as though he just remembered it himself.

“We should leave,” said Orion dimly. “Police…”

“We have time,” said Monroe. “Sit with us a minute.”

Orion collapsed against the wall on Monroe’s other side. The boy wasn’t too proud to not take comfort where it was offered. Monroe was iron. Not a comfortable place — cold and hard and brittle — but the aged solidity and resoluteness drew the boy closer.

Still. Something bothered Jack. As he thought on LAX and Disneyland and their night from hell, he couldn’t make sense of it.

“Why did you come?” asked Jack.

Monroe shrugged in a nonchalant way. “I’m here for the same reason Nines is tonight. I belong here. I couldn’t order my people to do things I wouldn’t do, especially when I knew what awaited you here.”

A twisted smile found Jack, but his heart wrinkled. “That’s not why Nines is there.”

“Yes,” said Monroe warily. “Yes, I’m beginning to see that.”

A flicker of life returned to him as he thought. Monroe thinking was a dangerous thing and Jack left him to it. He stood, but didn’t get any more than a few paces away before Monroe called for him.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “Whatever you need…”

Jack nodded, understanding. He needed to go home. Home. He walked, not daring to change form in case he didn’t change again. It had been a long time — maybe forever — since Jack had seen that kind of violence. He hadn’t expected to like it. He kept Monroe’s words about the Beast’s influence in mind. It helped. Not much, but a little.

The hours of calm cool night gave him too much room to think. His mind fell into the rhythmic step of his boots on the sidewalk. After tonight, most of the Sabbat would be dead. Nines would have East LA and Downtown, for better or for worse. The tentative alliance would get rid of the mysterious Chinatown vampires, as well as Westside. Absorbed in the Camarilla, Barty wanted his Anarchs to be Anarchs —  _ official opposition _ , he called it. Switzerland would keep their autonomy. Abrams could go back to Tinseltown, no hard feelings. LA would be safe. No more abandoned fledglings looking for sunrise. No more gang wars in the streets. No more Sabbat or Cathayans in the dark. But they would live under a prince. The Free States, no matter what Barty said, would die tonight.

There was a purpose, like Monroe said. Jack couldn’t help thinking of one of the Tremere scouting rituals done up in the Valley, though. The age of all the Sabbat they killed. Most were younger than Jack. A ton were not a lot older than Charlie. They didn’t understand nothing, least of all why a gang broke in and slaughtered them.

Jack had a key and entered Orsay’s house. It was better than going home alone. “It’s me,” he yelled, locking the door behind him. With all the spells on the doors and windows, the lock was only a formality.

“We’re in here,” said Orsay. She met him in the hallway, leaving the living room. She sighed. “Everything went as planned?”

“So far. We did our part. No one died. Couple got shot.” It reminded him of the still raw shotgun wound in his torso. He directed blood to heal it.

Without judgement, Orsay raised a hand and Jack remembered his teeth. He bared them reluctantly and his eyes watered with the bone-deep pain as she reshaped them.

“I attempted to scry,” she continued. “Rather, I preferred to send a vila, but it was too… industrialised. Poor spirit had no grounding to work from. Did…” She hesitated. “Did the captain speak of me?”

Jack grunted through her fingers in his mouth. “No. There were a load of szlatcha, though. Killed them all.”

Orsay nodded and continued her work. “Open wider. He did not ask, but I made it clear I would not create such beasts, though I would be pleased to help.”

The last of his teeth returned to more natural squared-off shapes. Jack nodded his thanks, prodding the results tentatively. “You did help. It was… I’m glad you weren’t there.”

She gave a not-smile. “I have seen worse, I can promise.”

He groaned and stomped off towards the kitchen. He had left a couple of beers here and took one. “I just… Do you got some cool new magic or something? I need…” He drank and frowned. “When I came home, you said ‘we’. Who’s ‘we’?”

“An… interesting and unworthy individual,” said Orsay.

Jack stepped past her into the living room. His entire body slackened and his lack of grip sent his beer to the ground. Anticipating it, one of the vilas caught and returned it to a side table. 

Ryuko sat on the couch and glanced up at Jack. “How’s it hanging?”

Orsay smoothly shut the door. Jack was tempted to follow her, but he couldn’t even find a single word to say.

Ryuko smiled, but his eyes were wet and red-rimmed. “Sit.”

This was his house. Jack stood.

Ryuko winced. “Alright. We’ll do it like this, then. I don’t wanna hear ‘I told you so’, but I’d deserve it. I… deserve a lot. I was wrong.” He nodded to himself. “Those… Those Hollowmen didn’t know shit. They said I was a Lilin, one of Lilith’s six children, the only mages, reincarnated—” He bowed his head. “I’m sure you remember. Anyway. I met some more. Hippies, visiting the city. And, they could do all the same stuff.  _ Mages.  _ And I thought of Pisha, how her ancestors were mages, too.”

Ryuko’s voice turned soft and bitter. “And… I guess there was never a purpose. Nothing more to me. I was just born with this, a lightning strike, and never made anything of myself. The Watchtower is just as out of reach as it was when I was twenty. And, now I’m old and at the end of my road.” He sniffed. “You were right. I want out of this shit before I’ve done too much.”

Jack found his voice. “ _ Too much?” _ he croaked. “I think the cats and dogs at Sage would have something to say — oh, wait. Or that producer. And whoever the fuck else.”

It didn’t get a rise from him. Ryuko sat back in Orsay’s old seventies couches and nodded. He couldn’t look at Jack.

“I would’ve done anything to have my powers mean something,” he said bitterly. “Anything. And I did  _ everything _ . I did nothing with them. I tried to climb the Watchtower, be a God. I fell, everytime. I thought, maybe, I could be a child of Lilith, a soldier for greater forces. I didn’t even do something heroic, like heal kids with cancer.”

“You’re not apologizing,” said Jack, but he still stepped closer.

Ryuko met his eyes. “I can’t. Nothing’s changed.”

“Then, why are you here?”

Jack wanted so desperately to shove the question back into whatever dank suspicious hole it came from. He wanted to sit with Ryuko, feel his warmth, tell him it was all gonna be okay. Another part, the part that had been Gangrel for too long, knew he could make it on his own. The broken mage was a liability. And Jack had done well without him. 

Ryuko smiled with tears. “Because I don’t really have anywhere else to go. The revival theatre got condemned. I’m seventy-two and I never bought a house — just, living beside a pathos’ focal nexus because — I don’t know why.”

Jack sat next to him. Ryuko shook, every inch quivering like a leaf. He bit his lip to a bloodless white. Jack reminded himself that, one night, he wanted Damsel to come to him. Skelter. Kanker. Nines. He couldn’t be suspicious when they did. Between the two of them, Ryuko had hurt himself more.

“Come here,” said Jack, and he opened his arms.

Once Ryuko started crying, Jack found he couldn’t hold it back. The rest of the night had been overwhelming enough. Like Ryuko, he had nowhere to go. Ryuko clawed at his shirt and struggled to go deeper, as if he could disappear in Jack’s chest.

“Magic’s done nothing but ruin my life,” said Ryuko bitterly. “I want you to take it.”

It took Jack a minute to understand what Ryuko was saying.

“You want—”

“Turn me.” He shook his head, tears still flowing. “Those hippies, they said crossing the Watchtower again kills magic — and you know you were gonna do it eventually. I’ll even be old and wrinkled.”

Ryuko fumbled through his necklaces to pick up the one that kept his illusion of youth, but Jack showed his own, the one he and Orsay had made.

“That woman,” said Jack, “she’s a blood sorcerer — koldun, she calls it. She’ll… She can change your face like clay. We can do this, but, Ryu — fuck.” He felt the tears come back. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Ryuko laughed. It was a mocking gleeful laugh. One that haunted a million humiliating memories. He brushed away Jack’s tears tenderly. “Why, dumbass?” he asked with a smile. “I picked you and you picked me back. We’re always gonna come back. Always.”

“You can’t treat me like that, then,” said Jack before he could stop himself.

Ryuko blinked, an end coming to his ragged breath. “What you mean?”

“I mean, being a mean old bastard,” he said. “I can take the teasing and fun, but some of it really hurts. Storming out, pushing me away, making me think I hurt you.”

Ryuko frowned, guilty. His long fingers picked at Jack’s t-shirt as a new crop of tears seeded in his eyes. “You deserve better. And I can  _ be _ better. But, please, please, just take the magic away from me.”

Jack’s eyes lingered on the door. He had never sired. He had only offered to turn Ryuko because he knew it would kill the magic. All the wonder in the world wasn’t worth his pain. But, there were so many others who had sired, other clans.

“Orsay’s got magic, like I said,” said Jack. “There’s Tzimisce, or we could go find Pisha, or there’s this Camarilla clan, Tremere, and Lasombra got magic—”

Ryuko kissed him. His lips burned hot, the warmth coursing through his mortal body. The feeling melted Jack and he wrapped his arms around him. Their tears mingled as Ryuko kissed him more fiercely. He soon lost himself and breath shuddered between their lips. He pushed Ryuko back into the couch.

“I’m  _ sorry _ ,” whispered Ryuko profusely. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all gonna be okay, man.”

Jack realised, as he said it, he actually believed it. So long as they wanted to, they could fix it. He pulled him closer onto his chest and bit into Ryuko’s neck. And he drank. 


	48. Forgive Him

The Sabbat had been banished — purged — destroyed — purified out of Los Angeles. At least mostly. Everything Charlie knew about the Sabbat said this was a good thing. Everyone came home in, mostly, one piece. Work on Blue Moon progressed fast. It wasn’t ready for the public but, like Rubio’s Medusa had shown, vampires were far more carefree about unfinished buildings.

Charlie found herself spending most of her time with Red. She thought the girl might’ve been aloof and stuck up, but she was just quiet. Also, the Ventrue blood and Ivy education gave her too many big words. But that was okay. Charlie could fix that. The domain wasn’t interested in social gatherings, at least not for a while. People wanted to heal on their own. Charlie could respect that, even if she didn’t understand it.

Finally —  _ finally _ — she managed an entire row all on her own. Beaming, Charlie held up the row of stitches.

Red chuckled and returned her smile. “Excellent job. Another fifty thousand like that and you’ll have a lovely blanket.”

Charlie lost her smile. “Are you serious?”

She laughed, which wasn’t an answer.

Now that she felt like she got the technique down, Charlie managed her second row in record time. Justin’s offer-slash-threat about having an apartment with her fell through. Something had happened with Lloyd, though Charlie wasn’t sure what, and the two spent too much time together. That left her to tag along with Red — or Rhys. And, of the two, Red at least knew how to do fun crafts.

She also was hella rich and had good taste in interior design. Charlie shuddered to think about what Rhys’ place looked like. The two-bedroom she shared with Red had a balcony that overlooked the Silver Lake reservoir, with all the latest in super modern furniture that looked more like cubes than anything anyone wanted to sit in. Red also had brought along some other knitted and crocheted things. The living room had a number of embroidered wall hangings — including a Malkavian broken mirror, which touched Charlie.

The rhythm of knitting did Charlie’s mind good. She also felt, as a cat owner, she had to give Oreo an excuse to play with string. He had his own designated basket of cheap yarn.

Red sighed. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you’ve found peace with the Camarilla praxis. There’s nothing and no one that can stand in the way of the Camarilla. I’ve heard about those archons, sounds terrifying.”

“I really don’t have a team in this,” said Charlie. “Sure, Garcia made it his dying mission to make my life difficult and kill Monroe, but archons — yeah no. Global state — yeah no.”

Red smiled to herself. “You sound like him.”

“What, Monroe?” she scoffed.

“He hates being told what to do. It’s quite surprising it took him this long to get wrapped up among Anarchs.”

Just to be contrary, Charlie was about to argue that, in fact, she  _ did _ like being told what to do. But Red would know that was a lie. The girl was perceptive and Charlie wasn’t exactly the world’s best secret-keeper.

“What’d you do in Dallas for fun?” asked Charlie. “Hold up and crochet blankets for the court?”

“When things got testy,” said Red mildly. “There was also elysium. Every night, the keeper would select the official hold of the court. There would be entertainment. Like Medusa, but, say, the next night’s an open rack of kine, the next an art gallery, a club, a museum, a theatre.”

Charlie raised an eyebrow. “Well. I heard a bunch of us are feeding down at Vesuvius — it’s some strip club on Sunset, run by Abrams’ kid. How’s that for Anarch elysium?”

Red continued knitting. “About what I expected. I can’t wait until the Valley’s keeper begins to make sanctums across the city. There’s still so much of LA I’d love to see.”

Charlie had only managed to make four additional rows. Red’s progress in the same time could be measured in inches. She tossed aside her barely started project. An itch growled in the back of her throat and fangs, the needling bits of hunger. “Well, I don’t know a lotta Ventrue—”

Red chuckled. “I think LA’s Ventrue population trebled the last months and you know most of us.”

She conceded the point. “I’m gonna go eat, maybe at Vesuvius. Is it polite to ask a Ventrue to come hunting or is that invasive?”

Red shrugged and kept knitting. “It’s polite to offer, but know you will be declined most occasions.”

Charlie pulled on her jacket and bowed low. “Madame Red, whilst thou accompany me upon a journey of feasting?”

“Be home before midnight,” said Red crisply.

Disgruntled, Charlie left and slammed the door. She could do with food, she realised as she stepped out. Knowing it was about to be sated made the hunger grow. It knotted down her spine and guts—

Charlie shook her head and ignored it. She was getting good at that, even while driving.

Things were going surprisingly well. Not only in the city, but personally. Her thoughts, as they wandered, landed on Rhys. He mentioned last time they spoke about restarting D&D. They had left off at a pivotal moment, just about to launch an invasion of Count Strahd’s castle.

Hollywood was busy. This was prime time and Vesuvius looked crazy popular, men coming and going. Charlie wondered if they’d let a woman order a dance. That was how it went, she thought. Velour was selling blood in the dancers, so you went behind the curtain to do the suck.

The most unlikely person waited outside the club, though. Charlie parked and quickly made her way over, not to lose him.

“Rhys,” she cried. “Think of the devil and he… lingers homosexually outside a strip club full of women. Are you that hungry?”

He didn’t look terribly hungry. Almost as though the good cheer of the other vampires sent him into a dismal pessimistic mood. He glared at every passerby, his dark eyes barely receding when they came to rest on Charlie.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Rhys wiped his face with a hand and it took away the foul emotion. He sighed. “Nothing. I’ve spent all week thinking. Today, twenty years ago, the Professor took me in.”

“Oh.”

“It’s been a hard week.” He smiled feebly.

Charlie considered Vesuvius. “Do you need to find a male strip club?”

“I don’t bite,” he said with a flash of fang, but the dark joke fell flat.

“Do you want company?”

Rhys nodded. They set off at a leisurely pace down the street. Packs of strangers, insulated in their own night on the town, ignored them. Charlie said a silent goodbye to Vesuvius and satisfying her small hunger. 

“The Professor always wanted us to be better than we are,” he said. “Better than we have the ability to be.”

Charlie prepared herself for another lecture of the Professor’s from beyond the grave. “You told me that. It helped.”

“I was bullshitting. It’s the only thing I’m good at.”

“Oh.”

“You gotta know, before Nines got powerful, most of Downtown was a wasteland. Half of Angels, too. The Professor  _ changed _ that,” said Rhys bitterly. “Before, no one’d take you into a gang or family if you couldn’t defend yourself — especially no fledglings. I spent a lot of early nights waiting for dawn on rooftops. The Professor would sit with me, each time, talking about the other boys, about sending me back to school. When I’d lose my nerve and the sky turned pink, I’d run back inside, and he’d come with me. I was a nightmare. I wasn’t grateful. I was a mean angry little pissfuck who hated the world and everything in it. I…” The anger leeched from his voice and he hung his head. “I never told him how much I appreciated him.”

“I’m sure he knew,” said Charlie softly.

She put her hand on him, but he shrugged it off. They had come to another parking lot. Rhys entered his car and she followed him.

“Where are we headed?” she asked.

“He didn’t,” said Rhys. “He never knew. He did what he did because he had to. Because it was his way of beating back the Beast. He never looked for a thanks.”

He started driving, too fast, like always. Charlie saved her fears for the pedestrians. Even furious car wrecks would barely be a threat.

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t know you loved him,” she said.

Rhys nodded, grinding his fangs. When he did take a breath, it hissed, and she realised he was holding back tears. “I loved him,” he admitted. “He was what my sire should’ve been, what my  _ father _ should’ve been.”

“My mother died in a car crash,” said Charlie.

The sudden change in subject made Rhys pause. “What?”

She didn’t know why she said it, but she couldn’t stop talking.

“She was a good mother. She worked too much, especially when she fell pregnant with Bella. An accident, a boyfriend who didn’t stay. But she loved us. She did the best she could, better than a lot, I’m sure. When I came out, she was worried, because she knew my life wasn’t going to be easy and no parent wants their kid to have a harder life than they need to.”

Charlie found it didn’t hurt. For the first time since her death, it didn’t hurt to talk about her mother.

“The last time we talked, just before she left work, she said, ‘Goodbye. I love you.’ Like she did every morning. Automatic. And I said, ‘See you later’. Like I did every morning. Automatic. Like it meant nothing.”

“Your mother knew,” said Rhys uncertainly.

“And the Professor knew. That’s what parents do. They know.”

Rhys turned into Griffith Park. He wiped a few tears that managed to escape. The engine died and the silence built, punctured by his heady breath.

“Did you come up here a lot?” she asked. “Or just to stalk me? It clears my head, coming here.”

Rhys left the car. He took off up the most common trail. Charlie followed, calling his name. She didn’t think there was any danger up there, but people did stupid things. Broken bones weren’t fun either. As she followed his turns up the path, she realised where he was going. A deep gut feeling told her to turn back, to let him face what he needed to alone.

But he hadn’t left her alone. Charlie wasn’t about to abandon him.

Rhys stood in the center of her campsite, where he had spooked her and sent her tumbling off the cliff. It almost killed her. He finished the job.

“I tried to figure out, for a really long time, what he’d want me to do about you,” said Rhys in a hard, broken voice. “He told me to teach you, comfort you, do for you what he’d done for me. And I tried — God help me, I’ve tried.”

“You have,” said Charlie gently. She reached out, but he turned back to face her.

He had a wooden stake in his hand.

Charlie pulled back, a stone in her throat. When she managed to tear her eyes from the weapon up to Rhys, the anger in his face answered her question. It asked another.

“How did you know?” she whispered.

With his other hand, he tapped his head. “Cobweb. What  _ have _ I been teaching you?”

Charlie thought again, about the prank of burgling Fortier, about the red corn syrup blood, about the rambling nonsense. All this time.

_ Don’t trust people. Verify your own information. _

Rhys needed to try to avenge the Professor, but he didn’t want to succeed. And he knew what would happen when he failed. Monroe had proven it. 

“If you know by the Cobweb,” said Charlie, swallowing as she stepped backwards, “then you only know because I’ve been angsting over it. I regret it.”

“You don’t regret — killing him,” he said, stumbling over the word. “You regret feeling like a monster. Being guilty. It never even  _ occurred _ to you that he had made a mistake—”

“A mistake?” she repeated, furious. “He sold my baby sister—”

“To  _ Salvador Garcia _ ,” said Rhys, stretching out the name in disbelief. “The Anarch of all Anarchs, MacNeil’s successor, the best of us—”

“He fed on my baby sister and—”

“Listen,” he hissed, tapping his head. “Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen.  _ Listen!  _ All this shit ran just fine until you turned up.”

“I didn’t do anything to deserve this,” snapped Charlie. “Nothing. You were the one who turned me.”

“I didn’t know what you would do!” he shouted. “I would’ve killed you and your sister myself if I knew what would come. All this bullshit.” He paced, scratching deep in his head. He struggled to get enough breath to form words. His chest heaved without air.

“You wouldn’t,” said Charlie, but she wasn’t so sure. It was all bravado. Rhys didn’t even bite humans. No way would he have killed two. “And you won’t now.”

Rhys flipped the wooden stake in his hand, point forward. “You wanna bet?” he snarled.

Every step she made, he followed, a slow gentle stalk. Charlie had been a predator, a killer, a monster in the shadows feasting on the essence of humanity. She hadn’t been prey. The Beast feared the feeling more than she did. 

“Rhys.”

But there was nothing to say. She had killed the Professor. He knew. He didn’t care why or how she felt. She had to pay for it. She couldn’t even argue. If someone else had killed Monroe, destroyed all her friendships, and left her floundering, she couldn’t say she wouldn’t have killed him.

When he lashed out, she barely caught him. The wood scraped across her arm. It didn’t burn, but it came too close to her chest. She shoved him and darted out of the way. As she turned, he stumbled over her, grabbling for her jeans. Rhys hissed and pulled himself up her body. She kicked, but he ignored the hit. Vampires could take it.

Charlie screamed and shoved him again, but he had managed to straddle her hips. She thrashed against him. Her hands flat against his chest, she bucked. Tried to throw him off. 

The stake came down. She gasped, her lungs empty vacuums. She jerked at the last moment and it pinched, digging deep. The sinking of the weapon into her flesh burned with violation. It missed. By inches. Luck.

She clawed at his shirt and it shredded. Rhys fought to pull his stake out for a second try. It wrenched out of her with new pain. This was it. She snarled and bared her fangs. 

Her bones cracked and screamed. Worse than the worst hunger, a pain worse than the stake, worse than the horror as Rhys showed his weapon. They took a new shape. The transformation spread up her hands, one joint at a time. Her hands curled inwards, nails thickening and turning black. Into paws. Her arms shortened. Her chest deepened. Her clothes vanished, as if by magic. Black hair as coarse as wire sprouted until it covered her skin. 

Thrown off by the changing shape of her hips, Rhys scrambled on the ground, staring. Charlie tackled him. Four limbs and a jaw, working in coordination. 

The two of them went over the cliff. 

Trees pulled at her with sharp arms of branches. Rocks slammed into her body. She yowled. She could hear Rhys grunt and curse. He hit the ground first and staggered to his feet. Charlie charged after him. She growled and took him down. Jaws latched around his leg. Teeth sunk into flesh and tasted blood. He screamed. 

She released him and crawled across him. She should kill him. He tried to kill her. He would again. There was no way to bring peace. It was over. Months of friendship, of smiles, of laughter, of finding a new way to live. Gone. She hadn’t broken it. He had. It wasn’t her fault. Self-defence. Everyone would understand. Monroe would tell her it was okay. Red would be shocked if she didn’t. Midnight and the group would get it. Shit happened when you were vampires.

Sometimes, people needed killing.

Her slavering jaws hung inches from Rhys’ terrified face. The stake had been lost in their fall. She growled and snapped. He whimpered.

She could. It was who she was. 

_ Forgive him. _

But she didn’t want to be. She didn’t have to be.

Charlie tried to find her way back to human bones. Hands first. The paws lengthened, nails growing pale and delicate, hands lengthy. She lost the strength in human limbs and they trembled, exhausted and hungry. She bore down on Rhys, but he made no more attempt to attack her.

“I know,” she gargled through a half-transformed throat. She coughed. “I know what you’re feeling. Eating you from the inside. This black hole. Changing your reflection in the mirror. I’ll tell you what to do with that pain. You hold onto it. And you live with it. Honour it. You never,  _ never _ deserved it, but neither does anyone else. Honour the Professor. Please. I’m trying to. Please.” It was her turn to struggle for breath. Tears choked her. “Don’t make me kill you, man. I don’t want to. We’ve done enough to each other.”

Rhys pulled her closer and Charlie collapsed, giving in. He buried his face in her shoulder. He didn’t need to say anything. She had said more than enough for both of them.


	49. The Eve of War

Monroe could see how diablerie could be, perhaps, habit-forming. He had lost control of himself, however briefly. He didn’t pity the Sabbat wastrel — a weakling Brujah. It was the nature of war. Spoils. Victor. The utter domination of another soul, more mortal than kindred. And it felt indescribable. A spiritual high, better than any drug or revelation. For a scant few moments, he had forgotten all about the past months. The constant gnawing hunger abated and the Beast quieted.

In the Beast’s silence, though, he felt the shame.

Shame was a small obstacle — as tonight would prove. He knew what he needed to do.

Monroe prided himself on winging it, on fabricating words out of thin air to influence allies and enemies. He knew if he entered Justin and Lloyd’s apartment without a plan, he would stand there, mute and shamed. Instead, as though it were any better, he sat on the stoop outside. He did not think. He dwelled. He self-flaggalated. He grimaced and pouted and cursed his own weakness.

In the end, he rang the doorbell.

It opened, a sliver of a pale face with blonde hair. Lloyd.

“Hello, can—”

Lloyd slammed the door again. Inside, he took his own turn cursing, and Justin opened the door instead. He winced. After the battle, Justin had come to Monroe on his own, trying to make sense of what he felt. Justin wasn’t a complicated person. Being stuck between Monroe and Lloyd was just as uncomfortable for him as the battle.

“You can say no,” said Monroe. “He doesn’t have to let me in.”

Justin glanced back inside. “It’s my place, too. Besides, you’re paying for it.”

Monroe stepped in, carefully. The boys hadn’t done much with the apartment. A couch, a new TV, video games. He found Lloyd in the bedroom, packing a suitcase.

“Hey, man,” said Monroe with a stilted smile.

Lloyd didn’t glare. “Whatever you’re here to say, say it.” He pulled open drawers and stuffed clothes haphazardly in his suitcase.

“I — uh — I think I’m gonna go take a walk,” said Justin. He cracked his shoulders. “Lovely… midnight walk.”

“No, dude.” Lloyd pointed a finger. It shook worse than his voice. “You ain’t leaving me alone with him. Don’t you  _ dare _ .”

Justin slunk into the bedroom. “Where you think you’re going?”

“You didn’t tell me you bought this with  _ his _ money,” said Lloyd darkly, as he continued to pack.

His anger and frustration barely concealed his fear. Not hatred. Hatred was something Monroe knew he wouldn’t come back from. Fear, on the other hand, could be remedied.

“Lloyd,” he said.

Lloyd didn’t look up.

“You don’t need to talk, then,” said Monroe. “Just listen. The Deathsingers told me how you guys handled the battle. I’m proud of you. I’m opening Blue Moon again, on Friday. Just kindred. Our first night in this brave new world — Camarilla, Anarchs, autarkis. I hope you’ll come.”

Lloyd threw another balled up shirt at the suitcase. He snorted and looked up, disappointed. “Is that it? I’m not really in a dancing mood.”

Monroe’s eyes slid to Justin.

“He knows,” said Lloyd empathetically. “He  _ knows _ what you did.”

Justin looked distinctly uncomfortable. “He said you yelled at him.”

Lloyd raised an eyebrow, daring Monroe to elaborate.

“I did. I cursed you out, accused you of disloyalty, terrified you, and Dominated you into kneeling.” Monroe managed to keep his voice level and eyes on Lloyd. He knew he couldn’t lie here, if he ever wanted to right things between them, but he couldn’t find any emotion to put in his dead voice. 

Lloyd had stopped trying to pack.

“Did I forget anything?” asked Monroe.

He opened and shut his mouth before he managed to get out, “I thought you were gonna kill me.”

“I thought so, too.”

Lloyd dropped his shirt. Justin stared.

“Why?” he croaked.

“Does it matter? There could never be a good reason for it.” Monroe had never been physical with affection, but he found himself wanting to hold Lloyd, to make him forgive him. “I’m sorry — and I know it’ll never be enough. You don’t have to accept it. I… I understand, if you can’t trust me. I can arrange transport, if you need to leave. You’re a good man, and loyal, and you didn’t deserve how I treated you.”

Lloyd worried his lip with a fang, brow furrowed. “I’m Brujah. I know what it looks like when the Beast gets its way. What I saw, that wasn’t the Beast. What was it?”

“Anger,” admitted Monroe. “At myself and my situation. Frustration at my failures. Stress.”

Lloyd’s laugh rattled. “You gotta find a way to deal with that, man.”

“I will.” He almost turned and left, to give Lloyd time to mull over his intent, but he couldn’t. “I’m doing my best,” said Monroe desperately. “And, if I’ve lost you, I’ll have to accept that. That, no matter for how small a moment, I was able to justify to myself treating you like that. And it’s worse. It’s worse than letting Zach die,” he said in a smaller voice. The name hung like a noose in the air. “Zach only died. You left — for the same reason I left my sire.”

It was a stupid move. Lloyd would remember Monroe begging, remember him lost and emotional and hurting. He could ruin him. Worse, it manipulated the kid.

Lloyd sniffed and couldn’t look at him. “When you found me, Vitel had me beaten and thrown, staked, into a dumpster to wait for the sun. My sire left me. You found me, too late, the sun was already coming up. So, you jumped in and shut the lid. Ripped the stake out. Spent the day in there with me.” He nodded. “I never thought I would feel worse than the day I acted up and Vitel did it again. Brawl. Stake. Dumpster. The disappointment, the way you cursed me out… Fuck, man.”

“It’s a special fledgling that gets his prince to try to kill him twice in a week,” said Monroe with a sad smile.

Lloyd didn’t smile. His eyes pleaded. “I was so, so sorry I disappointed you. But last week, as soon as you bolted out of your house and left me on that couch with Hawthorne, I… I felt so much worse.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he insisted. “You did nothing to earn that.”

He gnawed on his lip. “Would you have done that to Justin, or Red, or Charlie? Or Zach? Or Hawthorne?”

Every new name brought up a horrifying image of a moment that had never passed. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I don’t… You don’t mean any less to me.”

Justin slunk against the edge of the wall, trying to escape. “Sorry,” he muttered as he edged behind Monroe.

Lloyd didn’t yell to keep his witness. In a moment, they were left alone.

Monroe stuck his hands in his pockets. “So. Do you want my help to organize a flight or train?”

“No,” said Lloyd quietly.

Monroe waited a moment, but Lloyd didn’t elaborate. He just rested his hands on his half-packed suitcase, shoulders bowed.

“The door’s open,” said Monroe. Though he knew it was impossible, he felt a lump in his throat. “You can leave. I won’t follow you, or chase you. I won’t hurt you for leaving. I’m sorry, though. I well and truly am.”

Lloyd didn’t say anything else, so Monroe turned to leave. The unspoken emotions, those which had no words, weighed heavy in his chest. Justin’s “walk” took him as far as the living room, where he played some video game. The volume hadn’t been loud enough to drown out the conversation. Justin offered a sheepish smile as Monroe passed.

“Monroe,” called Lloyd. He came out of his bedroom, still clutching a balled up shirt. 

Monroe did his best to not show how his spirits raised. “Yes?”

Lloyd swallowed. “I’ll… I’ll think about staying.”

It was more than he had dared hope for. It was more than he deserved.

“You don’t have to,” he said again, more gently. “It’s more important that you feel safe.”

His eyes and voice sharpened. “Are you playing me?”

“Yes — and no,” he said unfairly. “I want you to stay. I want you to forgive me. And I know you’ll be better disposed if I am honest with you. But I couldn’t lie.”

Lloyd swallowed heavily again. “You’re one of the only licks I’ve ever met who’s not selfish.”

Monroe barked a laugh. He couldn’t help it. “I promise you, I am.”

“I doubt it.” He jerked a shoulder. “You got on the wrong side of Prince Marcus-fucking-Vitel, for some fledgling you never met. Sure, you got me, but, shit, man, I’m no hero. You did it because you’re good.”

Monroe could scarcely remember that night. It was a different man who spent the day in the dumpster with Lloyd, Hawthorne standing guard.

Justin blanched as he, too, remembered his own grim moment with Monore, wherein he had traded a lifeboon to save their lives. Jan, technically, still held it.

“Did you get just old?” asked Lloyd desperately, searching for a solid answer to a complicated question.

“This isn’t about me.”

Lloyd threw the shirt back in his room. “Of course, this is about you. Who the fuck else is it about? Him?” He pointed to Justin, who begged the couch to swallow him.

“Hit me, please, if it’ll make you—”

Lloyd took him up on the offer, harder and faster than Monroe had anticipated. Monroe spun with the force of the punch, his head slamming through the drywall behind him. White powder filtered down.

“I left DC for you, man,” shouted Lloyd. His voice, fists, and body trembled. “Because I wanted Monroe back — my fucking bastard step-Vent. Because you  _ promised _ I’d have a good life, wherever you settled. All those years, that hope you dumped on me — they were all lies?”

Monroe shook the dust out of his hair and healed the split lip. “No,” he said. “They weren’t lies. Still aren’t. But I’m not infallible. And I’m sorry. I wish I was what all of you need, but I’m not perfect. I’m—” He stopped himself.  _ I’m weak. I’m a vampire, a victim and a perpetrator of our terrible world. And you deserve better, childe. _ “I’m sorry, childe,” he said instead.

Lloyd moved aside as Monroe pulled himself off the floor. Justin’s video game paused, the sudden quiet engulfing them. The already small apartment shrunk. Lloyd kicked aside the scattered dust.

“Are you coming to Blue Moon?” asked Monroe.

Lloyd nodded. He glanced to Justin. “When I gotta tell you something, it’s not gonna be alone,” he said firmly. “I got my skills for dirty work, but I want witnesses. At least Justin.”

He was stating his terms. He would stay.

“Anything else?”

“I need a head’s up if you’re gonna fall into this angry-frustrated-stressed-whatever place. Take it out on me one more time and I’m gone,” promised Lloyd. “And…” He swallowed his lips and tried to square up. “Next time there’s a battle, I’m not doing it with strangers. I fight with you, not in some godforsaken quarter with Sabbat.”

“There shouldn’t be a next time,” said Monroe hopefully, but it was a damned hope.

“Still.”

He agreed. There was nothing else to do. Things weren’t square between them; they likely wouldn’t be for a while longer. Lloyd had too much self-respect to hug, especially in front of witnesses, even if it was only Justin. But Monroe could see it in his eyes.

Monroe left the apartment with a colossal weight lifted off his shoulder. He lingered in the crisp spring air. The flowers were looking remarkably beautiful tonight.

His phone rang. He answered it, unawares, and felt his mood siphon away. Petra van Allen, Barty’s wife and herald, who had never liked Monroe. She didn’t cry, but she whispered, frightened. She wasn’t supposed to have called him.

“Where is he?” asked Monroe in a daze.

He never drove so fast in his life. Struck dumb, confused, he couldn’t even think of why it had happened. Grey-Pacific greeted him with its stone and steel, leather armchairs and wood panels.

Petra van Allen met him at the brass cage elevator. Her immaculate hair had seen too many nights without style. She spent nights at the prince’s bedside or in a magical laboratory. She hit the button. The elevator slid upwards.

“If this is a trap,” said Monroe, “you should be ashamed of yourself.”

It wasn’t. He knew as soon as he had seen her face. Her hands clasped together, but her knuckles were white on grey skin.

“The Camarilla is trying to keep it quiet,” she whispered. “They’re worried about the Anarchs or Westside taking advantage, but…”

Taking advantage of weakness. But…

“It’s the end,” he said bluntly. “You’re giving up.”

The elevator opened and Petra led him down the hall and into a private suite. A bedroom. A crowd of vultures circled the bed. Victoria Ash dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Carlyle and Remus each sat on one side of the bed, holding Barty’s hands. The other primogen paced restlessly by the mantle. Jan drank whiskey and seemed surprised to spot Monroe.

Victoria Ash stood, a flash of hate in her eyes. It was gone, almost instantly, but Monroe recognised it. This was her doing. She had had a plan, as Monroe knew she had, when she urged Barty to fight in the battle. Of course, she had told him not to. There was no surer way to ensure Bartholomew Vaughn did something.

“We need to keep this quiet,” she urged Jan. “If the Anarchs—”

“I am not an Anarch,” snapped Monroe.

The Nosferatu Primogen glared. “Mind your tone with the seneschal.”

“Is that Matt?” asked a breathless voice from the bed. It gained strength. “Everyone.  _ Everyone  _ out.”

“Your Highness—”

“Out!” he rasped.

“Save your strength, Your—”

_ “OUT!” _

The Dominate had no direction, but he was still their prince. Reluctantly, his childer left the bedside and the party filed out. Monroe could get a good look at Barty. It was a magical curse. Petra, the current reigning Tremere, had done her best to unpuzzle it. They must’ve thought one of the Tzimisce cast it during the battle. 

Monroe had known Barty for almost half his life. He knew the square of his jaw, the black curls, the glinting stormy eyes. Like most kindred, he had been Embraced in his twenties. Over the last two days, he had aged sixty years. The hair greyed like his eyes, which lost their lustre. His powerful body withered and weakened, shrinking in the wrappings of his skin.

Monroe approached and couldn’t keep the horror from his face. Mithras the lion growled, but Barty lifted a liver spotted hand to stroke the beast and he let Monroe sit.

Barty smiled. “I’m still a looker, aren’t I?” He rasped a chuckle. “I got him, though. That koldun bastard. Took the head right from his body —  _ swack! _ ”

Monroe couldn’t bare to tell him his murderess has just left the room. A woman he had spent months publicly and privately insulting and belittling. An elder more than thrice their age. She had gotten the better of them. As she always would have.

“Damn you, Barty,” he spat. “You didn’t have to fight.”

“Fuck you, pisshead.” Emotion glistened his eyes, but not regret. “I did, Matt. You were always better than me, in this. Nobler. We knew we both had to be there.” He chuckled again. “Bet you didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I did. Something about killing something that’s gotta be killed, after all this bullshit about killing the wrong people.”

The bedside table cluttered with amulets and spell components. Sigils had been carved into the bed and Barty’s skin, disappearing into the sleeves of his pyjamas. 

“Petra’s done all she could,” said Monroe softly. “I’m sorry.”

Barty fixed him a stern look. “You… Whatever you two have between you, set it aside. Dying wish, I get those. You’ll need her, to keep peace in the Bay.”

“I’ll need her?” he asked, surprised.

Then he understood.

“No, Barty,” said Monroe. _ “No.” _

A terrible thought came to Monroe. What if this hadn’t been Victoria Ash’s vengeance but Jan’s plan all along? Had he used Victoria to enact his own schemes?

“They’re all vultures,” cursed Barty. “Circling. Waiting on me to die. They can feel it. Soon… Soon they’re gonna need to agree on a replacement. I told Pieterzoon.” He lifted his hand from the lion, who grunted, and grasped Mornoe’s hands. The bones moved under his skin like a skeleton. “I want you to be prince, Matt.”

“No.”

“You can do it,” he insisted. “Pieterzoon agreed. Makes sense, he said. The Anarchs’ll follow you. They’ll think you assassinated me — respect you for it. And you already got a chunk of LA following you. Los Angeles doesn’t need war. It can come… peacefully, to the Camarilla.”

_ That’s where you’re wrong, dear friend _ . LA would never bow down without a fight. The Sabbat were bloody and broken, but not gone. Westside only gathered more strength. The Middle Kingdom thought themselves invisible. Nines would riot at Barty’s death — he seemed to actually like the man.

Barty wouldn’t live to know what happened.

“I had… Petra leave some paper, a pen,” said Barty. The effort of speaking drained him.

Monroe took a spellbook left behind to write on. “You want me to write your living will.”

Only Ventrue wrote wills, as typically Ventrue had the most that others would squabble over upon their deaths.

Barty nodded. “Should’ve prepared it… decades ago.” He waved a hand. “You know how it goes.  _ I, Bartholomew Francis Vaughn, of the Clan of Kings, do leave this to be my last will upon this living world… _ Petra can untangle my finances and ghouls… Carlyle gets Mithras, but he knows that… Remus gets the ships, in the Bay, he loves the water…” Tears grew in the corners of his eyes. “Make sure Pieterzoon gets this. Can’t leave it to someone else.”

“I will,” he lied.

The earnest sadness in Barty’s eyes soiled him. Barty had always been a true friend. Monroe had been too blinded by suspicion to see it. And, still, Barty had persisted, even when everything seemed lost. When Monroe had been lost.

“And… my crown.” Barty licked his lips. “Lord Prince of California, Prince of… San Francisco Bay… and Los Angeles, to Matthew Monroe, of the Clan of Kings. Put in your lineage.”

Monroe couldn’t find the strength to hold the pen. “Please, don’t die on me, Barty.”

Barty chuckled. “I’ve done this dance for two nights, now.”

“I can’t…” He tried to remind himself Barty would never know if he took the crown, but that was only motivation to continue. “I’m barely holding onto my land and people. Onto myself. I can’t — I  _ can’t _ take on Sacramento and the Bay and San Diego and… LA.”

He smiled, his mouth a ruin of brown and chipped teeth. Only his fangs were a pristine white. “You’ll hate it more than I did. This isn’t a gift… with a bow and a stripper. It’s a  _ duty _ . And it’ll fuck you. Hard, without lube, in a hole you never knew you had. And, now, it’s all yours. This mess… Pieterzoon’s making of California.” His brow furrowed with pain. “All the purges. Tara.”

“Tara?” asked Monroe, surprised. “San Diego?”

“She got a visit, by an archon. Brujah. Theo Bell. Went ugly.”

Another archon, from another clan. What was going on with the justicars or was it all Jan’s allies and debts called in? And Monroe had saved Tara from Garcia’s dungeons and returned her to San Diego. Her atrocities lay at his feet, alongside his own.

“At least they’ll say I did this right,” said Barty, wincing. “I was Ventrue… in the end. Write my lineage and let me sign it.”

Monroe struggled to finish the will. Lies came easily, but not now. Not for Barty. He kept his objections to himself, though. He handed it over and Barty scrawled at the end of his list of ancestors. Back to Mithras, Ventru, Enoch, Caine.

Barty threw the will and pen across the bed. They bounced harmlessly.

“Any other dying wishes?” asked Monroe, desperate to do whatever he could.

“Yeah. Slap Victoria Ash.”

“I will.”

Barty laughed, but it was a thin whisper. His eyes sombered again, too fast for the Barty Monroe had always known. “Get rid of the vultures, please,” he whispered. “Let me die in peace, with my wife and childer.”

Regretfully, Monroe stood and took the will.

“Thank you,” said Barty. “For taking my crown.”

“I haven’t said I would,” said Monroe, too forcefully.

“You will.”

The crowd of vultures waited outside the door. All were too old and well-bred to listen at the keyhole and the doors were too thick, regardless. They turned inquisitively. Monroe’s eyes lingered on Victoria Ash, too long. And he knew, even if he wanted Barty’s crown, he couldn’t have it.

Monroe lifted the will. “A word, Missus Herald.”

Surprised, Petra followed him into a spare room. Most of them had stoked fires. Petra scowled and moved to extinguish it, but Monroe tossed the will on the coals.

“Carlyle gets Mithras. Remus gets boats. You his material wealth.”

“And you get his crown,” said Petra stiffly.

“You called me because you believed this was foul play,” said Monroe. He slid the bolt on the door.

“You were an old friend of my husband. He wanted you at his deathbed,” she said through thinned lips.

Monroe watched the will catch and smolder. “You said he had been struck by a Hermetic blood curse. Hermetic.” He glanced to her. “Tremere practice Hermetic blood sorcery. Tremere is the only clan who cannot join the Sabbat. There are no antitribu. There are none among the Anarchs here.”

Petra scoffed, a shrill nervous sound. “Are you accusing me of killing my husband?”

“Goodness, no,” he said. “If I suspected that, I would’ve killed you already.”

Her eyes pierced his aura and her lip curled. “So long as you wouldn’t diablerize me.”

“You are in great danger,” he warned her. “This wasn’t an accident, or even an attempt of Westside to assassinate the prince. It’s a coup. Barty means well, but I can never take his crown.”

Petra gathered herself. “You are a threat to the Camarilla. Willful. Violent. Cursed.”

“Much the same could have been said about Barty,” said Monroe softly. “Please, take your childer and leave, before the seneschal can kill you as well.”

Her eyes darkened. “I know how to survive. Your concern is unwelcome.”

“You are welcome in Silver Lake,” he said. “I mean what I say. The seneschal has been meeting with Westside’s Tremere Regent. The curse, likely, came from him — an elder and more powerful Hermetic blood sorcerer than yourself.”

Petra turned from him and poked the coals to encourage them to devour the will. “And  _ I _ mean what _ I _ say,” she said to the flames. “I know how to survive.”

She did know. Monroe wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. She blamed herself for not protecting her husband. Admitting she had to flee would be accepting she could also not protect their childer. He didn’t envy her position. As herald, if she kept her nose clean, she might survive.

“I can’t let this go unanswered,” said Monroe darkly. He felt it again, that urge that led him to salt and burn Fortier. “She must die.”

Petra softened, as much as she ever might. “Barty would want you to. He was full of stupid ideas like that. Honour him instead. Survive. I will not throw away Remus and Carlyle after this.” She hesitated. “I might still find a way to stop this curse before it takes him. Sometimes, God is merciful.”

“In my experience, elders are not,” he said.

There was nothing else Monroe could do.

Monroe left in a hurry. He couldn’t also accost Jan, no matter how much it weighed on him. He didn’t want to know if Jan was responsible for Barty’s death. Monroe would probably hit him. It would only ensure California’s future would be that much darker. Monroe was not arrogant enough to think he could reign in a troop of archons. Maybe, though, he could’ve helped.

Monroe made a number of calls as he fled Grey-Pacific. Blue Moon wasn’t opening Friday. It opened tonight.

He was the first to arrive. Rather than smoke, the place smelled acidicly of new paint and tiling glue. It almost looked alright. Desolate, but alright. The bones hadn’t been damaged. Monroe hadn’t realised how much he missed it until he walked inside. The flooring had been renewed. Decor hadn’t been replaced, though a new bar had been installed. He tested the stage. It felt sturdy, even without the lighting finished.

Monroe sat on the edge, legs dangling, and waited. He counted the groups off as they arrived. Ritter, with Hawthorne and his childer. The Deathsingers and Reapers. The Hollowmen. The thinblood Alchemists. Jack came with Orsay. Gary Golden didn’t make an appearance, but his childe Imalia did. Rhys Wilson and a few other solos. Rubio and Alice Zhao. The remnants of El Hermandad. Ashley and his brood. Isaac Abrams didn’t come, but Velvet Velour did, though she lingered closer to Ashley than Monroe was led to believe their relationship would indicate.

They sat on the edge of the pit, clustering in dark corners, or climbing onto the bar. Monroe struggled to think of how much to tell them. Soon, they would lose interest in inspecting Blue Moon’s changes.

He didn’t stand. He didn’t need a microphone. People turned to him when he started talking.

“Thank you for all coming on short notice. We have a new crop of problems,” he said. “I came back from the Valley’s elysium. The Sabbat assault was successful. Two bishops were killed, though the archbishop still lives. A minor miracle, there have been no lasting injuries on our side. Unfortunately,” he said with a sigh, “the ‘our side’ might dissolve imminently. Prince Bartholomew Vaughn is dying.”

A trickle of uneasy excitement passed through them. A couple laughed. Orion shoved Crow to shut him up.

“Who killed him?” asked Azalea.

“I don’t know.”

“Was it Nines?” asked Thao. She crossed her arms, impressed. “Good for him.”

“Nines won’t make peace with another Camarilla prince,” snapped Jack. “From what I saw of that court, he’s not gonna even talk with the next one.”

“We gonna oust another prince?” asked one of El Hermandad. “I wouldn’t mind allying with Rodriguez.”

“Fuck, no,” snorted Jack.

“Could we be on the block if the Valley blames the Anarchs?” asked Thao.

“Probably,” grunted Lloyd. “Anarch kills a prince, the new prince will have the right to purge — all the way out to San Diego if they want.”

“I suspect the Camarilla will blame Westside,” said Hawthorne. “It’ll give them a valid reason to purge.”

“The Camarilla doesn’t need a reason to butcher us,” said Orion, not hearing himself until Imalia interrupted him with a snide cackle.

“ _ Us _ , Brujah? What part of  _ us _ involves  _ the Westside Camarilla?” _

“In case you haven’t noticed,” he said hotly, “we’re in the middle between them.”

“The Camarilla will need to justify to themselves killing Westside,” said Red. “This will give them an excuse. Camarilla enjoy living as much as any other. Much of Westside are only Anarchs with higher aspirations.”

“I won’t talk to LaCroix unless all of us can agree how I’m approaching that negotiation table,” said Monroe, more loudly.

The idea this would be made democratically surprised them. It surprised himself, but he was growing tired of bearing the weight of authority. Wherever he went, he didn’t want to drag his people. He needed to lead them. He would not be a despot. Not again. Not a dictator, not even a benevolent one.

“The easiest way for the Valley to attack Westside is through us,” said Orion, stating the obvious again for the insipid.

“Yes,” said Monroe patiently as people understood his predicament.  _ “We _ could ally with the Valley to destroy Westside, subjugate Nines — but that will lead to more war. I won’t.”

Those who had come along to kill the Sabbat stilled at the idea. Orion particularly tensed.

“Absolutely not,” said Midnight on his behalf.

“The Camarilla will win,” said Red in the hollow voice of someone who knew what she talked about. “If they want LA, they will get it eventually. Better to come to the archons’ table while we can still negotiate from a position of power.”

“No,” said Monroe, and he was relieved he was the first to say it. Red’s sentiment, while true, would not be well received. “I will admit it. Barty was a good and true friend of mine, an Anarch who opposed tyranny and a Ventrue who loved his people. He was murdered. Not by Sabbat or Nines. Westside might’ve had their part to play, but I believe it was a coup. It is the way of Camarilla ambition, but I will make no peace with his murderers.”

His positive words of Barty rang uncertainly.

Jack leaned over the rails, looking down into the empty mosh pit. “I only met him a few times, but he seemed like a guy I’d like to know better.”

“I met him, too,” said Charlie. “If a war on the Valley could bring him back, I’d let you make it, Monroe, but he’s gone. And no vengeance will bring him back.”

Her solemn words shocked him. The woman who killed the Professor, the most beloved old guard Anarch, a murder he had covered up for her. But she was right. Her short time as a kindred had aged her. Looking into her eyes, Monroe had the uncanny feeling she knew what he had done.

Monroe restrained himself. Victoria Ash was his own business, then.

“Well, that’s all well and good,” said Ashley. “I am delighted you’ve discovered philosophy in your youth, moonchilde, but I’ve had my dealings with the Camarilla, too. Redding is right. The Valley is full of elders. Elders are used to being obeyed. Any semblance of disobedience is a personal insult that calls for you to fashion your own noose. They will try to tame Downtown  _ and _ us. Westside is young. They’ll wait and see what happens.”

“What hope do we have of holding back the Tower?” asked Orsay. “Either west or north?”

“Snowball’s chance,” said Ashley bitterly.

“That is still a chance,” said Azalea.

“Nines won’t ally with us unless we say we belong to him,” said Jack. “Even if he needs help against Chinatown. Calling himself ‘baron’ has only made him think more of himself.”

They continued to argue, back and forth. Monroe resettled himself cross-legged on the stage and watched them. His people. More and more spoke up. By their own admission, the loudest and most concise voices formed a council of sorts. A primogen, by any other name. 

Rubio watched, troubled and thinking. The Camarilla had never been kind to Setites, banishing the clan entirely from more than one city. He, too, Monroe knew, had poor dealings with Nines. Velvet absorbed it all, Abrams’ ears but not his voice. Imalia scorned any opinion that wasn’t Anarch-centered, revealing her sire’s feelings.

More and more, it seemed, there was no answer that any single person — let alone all of them — could agree on.

Justin picked himself off the floor. “Why the fuck should any of us even  _ think  _ about listening to some new elder in the Valley or an ambitious fuck in Westside?”

It stopped the back-and-forth between Orion and Azalea. 

“Hell,” continued Justin, pointing over to the Brujah and Jack, “some of us here came from Downtown and no one sounds thrilled about going back to the gold-standard Anarch way.”

“That was Garcia,” said Jack. The remnants of El Hermandad grimaced, embarrassed, but didn’t throw any ugly look. Losing the girls had defanged them and lost them their voice.

Justin took a few thankful steps across the mosh pit. “That’s exactly my point! I’ve been around a bit. Baltimore, a rule-by-elders old time Cam city that almost killed me. Been in DC, a Tower city who lets his Anarchs rule chunks like Downtown here. Been in New Orleans, Tower in name but nothing else, a violent chaotic shithole. And I know there’s only one lick I’m gonna follow. Why shouldn’t we just claim our  _ own  _ land? Challenge both Valley  _ and  _ Westside? If the Camarilla’s gonna win, why don’t we make our own? Make our  _ own _ laws? 

“Now, I wasn’t exactly around for your Rant—” he turned back to Monroe, who stared, anxious for where Justin was headed with this “—but I got the memo.  _ You’re _ the answer to the Red Question. I obey you because I know you want me to think for myself — and I have. I will follow you because you know where you’re going and I don’t know where that is, but I know damn sure I want to be there. I will forgive you because I know you will make amends. I will kneel because I know you want me on my feet. Because you are the only prince I ever want to know. The bastard prince the Camarilla never wanted to make.”

Justin knelt.

He knelt the way Monroe had coached him to kneel in front of Prince Garlotte in Baltimore — on one knee, arm crossed over it, head bowed. Right in the center of the mosh pit, clear for everyone to see. 

The lull of argument silenced like a falling knife. A guillotine. 

Monroe couldn’t see the faces in the glare of the lights, but he wouldn’t lose another. This would fast turn into a mob. He shuffled off the stage and gripped Justin by the shoulder. “Get up.”

Red knelt. And Charlie. Ritter whispered to Hawthorne what had happened and, with a smile, she knelt.

“The Bastard Prince of Los Angeles,” declared Lloyd with a small laugh. And he knelt in the light, eyes dark in their depths. Not forgiven. But there were more important things than forgiveness here tonight.

“The Blue Prince.” Jack came down from behind the rails and knelt, more awkwardly. 

And Orion and the Reapers picked themselves off the bar. The Deathsingers were rising, too. Anarch-sired neonates who had never before knelt before their leaders, came down and repeated Lloyd’s title. And knelt. Some more awkward than others, all sincere. 

Reluctantly, but not as reluctantly as he had expected, when Monroe’s eyes found his, Ashley dropped to a knee. He didn’t bow his head, but there was something Monore had never seen in him before. Respect.

The wave passed through Blue Moon and touched every kindred. Monroe’s hand slipped from Justin’s shoulder. Thinbloods and Caitiff, the dregs of society. He watched Lasombra, a clan who had waged war with Ventrue since the fall of Rome, come to declare themselves for him. Tzimisce. Setite. Toreador. Clans who hadn’t co-existed since before the foundation of the sects. 

One by one, they repeated the name, leaving the hollow room ringing to the unfinished ceiling, Monroe helpless but to watch. 

“The Bastard Prince!”

“The Bastard Prince!”

_ “The Bastard Prince!” _


	50. Epilogue 1: Lessons to Learn

Jack hadn’t been home to his apartment in ages. Coming back, with Ryuko, felt like a waking memory. There was a layer of dust on everything, though, and the milk in the fridge was dangerous spoiled. Just like their relationship. Dusty and moldy and ready to explode.

Ryuko flipped through his arcane textbooks, absorbed. He had gone through a stack of journals already, deciding on some to burn. He moved softer, more unsure, more subdued. There was no swagger, no burst of excitement. He regarded his work with interested disgust.

Jack had lost his nerve at the last minute. Despite licking over the wound, Ryuko had a nasty scar on his neck. And was most definitely  _ not _ a vampire.

They hadn’t talked about it in days.

Jack continued to pack away his clothes. He tried to not watch Ryuko, but failed miserably.

“Why did you take me back?” asked Ryuko casually, as though he had found a particularly interesting factoid about leylines.

Jack shrugged. “Because I missed you. I wanted you back in my life.”

Suddenly, Ryuko threw all his journals and books in the burn pile. “Why?” he repeated, shaking his head. His voice cut like glass. “Why… after I’ve been so stupid and so — so—”

“Hey,” said Jack gently. He leaned over the bed to put a hand on Ryuko’s bare knee. He had shirked the black clothes he had wore as a Hollowman and was back to cargo shorts and tie-dye t-shirts. “I’ve had a lotta chances to make a life without you. I’m still here.”

“Yeah.” Ryuko moved gingerly and pulled a small box out of his pocket.

“What’s going on?”

Ryuko came around the bed and dropped to a knee in front of him.

“What are you doing, man? Get up.”

Jack knew exactly what he was doing.

“Doing something I should’ve done a long time ago,” said Ryuko sincerely. “Jack, I love you, and I’ve never done a great job of showing it. I’ve been heartless and mean, but I’m ready to learn how to love you the way you deserve to be loved. And, maybe it’ll only be when the sun goes down, and — and I won’t be a mage, but we’ll be together. Forever.” 

He fumbled for the box, but Jack put his hand over it and kept it shut. The panic in Ryuko’s eyes almost made Jack let him go on with it.

Jack struggled for a way to word what he knew. “You’re only doing this because you hate me being able to forgive you. You think it puts me above you, and you can’t stand that.”

Ryuko stared and opened and shut his mouth like a goldfish.

Jack smiled ruefully. “I know you too well.”

“I can learn,” he whispered. Even the small voice sounded like terrible effort for him to admit. “I swear.”

“Ryu,” he started. He scratched the back of his head and dropped to his knees to join him. “I didn’t turn you, not because I don’t want to, but because I’m scared. This world you’d be coming into, you only know a fringe of it. And, to have someone I… love in it, it scares me.”

Ryuko dropped the ring box and took his hands. “I can handle it.”

“Can you?” asked Jack, feeling a monster for even asking it. “I told you before. Sometimes, people’s dark sides line up in bad ways. The Hollowmen manipulated you for magical knowledge — but you got out. The Beast will  _ be _ you. There’s no getting out of that. I know you’ve always scorned and made light of the condition and my Beast, because you were intimidated by it and knew you would probably have to deal with it, one night, too, but—”

“Can we not psychoanalyze me?” snapped Ryuko with a touch of his usual fervor.

Jack smiled, but it didn’t last long. “I don’t want to lose you again, after I’ve only just got you back. Eternity is a  _ long _ time. Still scares me shitless to think about sometimes.”

“You’re undead. You don’t shit.”

“Deflecting,” said Jack with a raised eyebrow. “Because it scares you, too. You don’t want immortality so much as you don’t want to die, and—”

“Enough of that,” he snapped again. His hands, sharp and warm in Jack’s, tightened. “Look,” he started again, more kindly, “you’re right, but that doesn’t give you the right to go rummaging around in my skull.”

“Sorry,” said Jack, but he was surprised. That was a remarkably adult and collected response to being embarrassed. For Ryuko, at least.

“I don’t really want to drink blood,” said Ryuko quietly. “I don’t like the idea of capital-F Forever. From what I’ve seen of vampires, I’m not exactly jumping up and down for joy. I like the sun and, despite everything it’s done, I love my magic. I can’t even say I love you more.”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“But I  _ choose  _ this,” he finished. “This life. We can go, anywhere. It doesn’t matter, so long as we’re together.”

“I’m not ready to leave,” said Jack, though it tasted like a lie with the Beast in his ear. The Beast wanted freedom, wildness. It rebelled at being tied down. Part of him was scared of Ryuko getting that Beast. “You should get to know Orsay, adjust to vampire living. And we just crowned a new… prince — kind of. Long story.”

Jack pulled them both to their feet.

Ryuko grabbed the ring box and stuffed it in his pocket. “So. Does that mean we aren’t engaged?”

“Let me see the ring first,” said Jack, grinning.

Ryuko scowled, but Jack kissed him and the scowl slowly faded.

Orsay seemed disgruntled, if unsurprised, to see Jack turn up on her doorstep with Ryuko and his suitcases. Jack offered a beaming smile. Orsay wrinkled her nose.

“You should Embrace the… unruly mage,” said Orsay.

“I will, soon,” said Jack with a shrug.

“When I allowed you to live with me, that offer did not extend to pets,” said Orsay, though she did stand aside to let them in.

“Oh, Orsay,” said Jack, still smiling. “If you want a Gangrel as a housemate, you should’ve expected pets.”

She looked him up and down. “You rather invited yourself.”

“I don’t hear any arguing.” He put a cupped hand to his ear, straining, but Orsay had nothing to say. She almost smiled.

“Will the pet need a second bedroom?”

“I really have to argue,” said Ryuko, jaw dropping. “I am  _ not _ a pet.”

“Him and I can share a room,” said Jack. 

He understood in a flash how it sounded, but Orsay only cast a withering look down Ryuko’s unseemly clothing.

“I suppose you can,” she said, turning down the hall for them to follow.

“What… Orsay, was it?” asked Ryuko, lagging behind.

“Madame Grimaldi, to you.”

Only Jack could hear the not-smile in her voice. Ryuko blanched and swallowed.

“Madame Grimaldi,” said Ryuko breathlessly, “these ghosts you’ve bound. They’re  _ beautiful _ . I never considered, but I guess they have enough sentience to be able to be household slaves.”

Orsay stopped in front of their door. Her red eyes glowed with fire. “They are  _ not _ ghosts, Mr Saito. They are vila, natural spirits of the land, wise in their ancient wisdom and powerful as the elements. They are not slaves, to be chained and beat, but servants and ought be respected as such.” 

Ryuko shrunk back from the calm anger in her voice.

She smiled. “But, yes, to the correct vision, they are beautiful, Mr Saito.”

“She likes you,” said Jack, proud.

“I think she wants to eat me,” he muttered.

They deposited their suitcases and, as Ryuko took to exploring the house and its hundreds of books, Jack and Orsay shared a drink in the living room.

“Are you going to give me a time limit?” asked Jack, considering his glass rather than the witch.

“No,” said Orsay after a thought. “I do like your mage. I will tolerate him.”

“He’s a lot older than he looks,” said Jack. “We went to high school together.”

“I can only imagine what a terror he was then,” she mused, drinking. “Regardless, once he is Embraced, I will flesh-craft him as he desires. I assume his appearance is his own magic.”

“Do you know how mages take to the Embrace?” he asked, worried. He told her how he had seen, during Hollowmen rituals, Ryuko drink buckets of vampire blood and not be affected.

“The Vaulderie,” she considered. “Hmm. That is unique. Perhaps, this is history allocating vengeance. The mages of House Tremere once kidnapped, experimented upon, and butchered Tzimisce. Perhaps, the turns have tabled.”

Jack froze, glass half-raised to his lips, before he noticed the look in Orsay’s eyes.

“You’re joking?” he asked. “ _ You’ve _ made a joke?”

“Yes, Jack,” she said patiently. “Yes, I am. No matter how hard you try, a bull will not give milk. How old is he?”

“Seventy-three.”

Orsay raised a hand and the winds of a vila danced between her fingers. “Under his charms, is he healthy and whole?”

“In body? No. In mind?” Jack thought. “Also, no. What are you thinking?”

Ryuko wasn’t a colossal fan of the idea. After the emotional damage magic had done for him, he didn’t want to trust it again. He sat at the kitchen table as Orsay stirred a pot that simmered with blood and components.

“You make this one before?” he demanded of Jack.

“Mr Shen is a quick learner and has a remarkable natural aptitude for sorcery,” said Orsay before Jack could answer. “I have made this many times.”

“And it’s supposed to cure me of… mystery ailments?” asked Ryuko. He eyed the chipped white coffee mug waiting for the noxious mixture.

“Yes,” she said. She tapped the spoon and set it aside. A vila continued to stir. “You took the Vaulderie, several times. Dare you say you did not feel better with vitae in your system?”

Ryuko shuffled. “Well, no, but—”

“Vitae seeks first to heal maladies,” she continued over him. “At the moment of your Embrace, when you take your final breath, your body will be frozen in such a condition — its pains and weaknesses. Given time to heal them utterly, you will have a more pleasant unlife. This is a favour.”

Ryuko looked to Jack, who nodded encouragingly. He would’ve eagerly gulped down anything Orsay made, even if it smelled like that pot.

“Why would you help me?” asked Ryuko.

“Blood sorcery, including koldunism, is a tool to an end, like any other. I have heard rumours of mages attempting to Ascend to divinity—”

“That was me,” said Ryuko blankly. “Me. I told you that.”

Orsay inclined her head. “I was attempting to be delicate.”

“You still didn’t answer me. Why are you helping me with this?” His fingers, curled, held onto the tangle of amulets he had used to keep his pains at bay.

Orsay glanced to Jack before answering. “Suspicious. He will make a good Cainite.”

“I know,” said Jack, resigned.

Hearing this, Ryuko had the grace and self-awareness to be ashamed. “I’ll drink it,” he muttered. “No need to be an ass about it.”

Orsay thanked the vila and took her spoon back, continuing to stir.

Jack stood next to Ryuko, who leaned full into him. Reluctantly, Jack slid his arm around him. In the quiet, he could feel how lost and afraid Ryuko was. Jack definitely needed to bring in more pets. Something to cheer them up. Surely, Orsay would appreciate a fancy cat or two. Didn’t witches like cats? 

Orsay did a double take when she spotted Jack and Ryuko’s physical closeness. Jack stiffened, but her eyes found his. She gave a small, almost imperceptible nod. Jack didn’t know what Ryuko was scared of. Orsay was helping because she wanted to. She had been alone for too long. It did things to a person. She was even willing to take a beaten up Gangrel Anarch — Anarch? Was that what Jack was, as he followed a prince? — and a lost elderly mage, soon-to-be fledgling vampire.

Things, though, Jack knew, had a way of sorting themselves out.

  
  


Charlie missed dandelions in the sunlight. The vibrant highlighter yellow contrasted with fresh Astroturf. In the night, the grass turned blue-black and the dandelions a miserable mustard. Even in pools of streetlight, they weren’t the same. The yellow colour stained her fingers, though. So readily. Like blood, soaking into hands.

Things were quiet, once again. Uncertain. Hopeful. Charlie knew this feeling and knew not to trust it. If she lost vigilance, even for a moment, she could lose the rest of herself. And who knew how long it would take to find again. Months. Years. Decades. Eternity.

Like any respectable undead, she found herself more and more in a graveyard. Sometimes she took knitting. Sometimes Red followed her, silently, a shared understanding speaking for them. Sometimes Rhys was there before she was. Most of the time, Charlie sat alone. She liked being alone.

Alone, she could remember who she had been. Charlie Bradley. No matter how far she stepped outside the memory of her mother’s daughter. She still thought of finding Ashley. Like she had told Orion once, it would’ve been cool to have hit the gym before the Immortal Pause Button hit her body. Then again, finding Ashley seemed like poking a sleeping dragon. A sleeping debt collector.

Charlie resigned herself to sitting in the turned graveyard dirt. Freckles of new grass sprouted under her. The feeling returned to her, bit by bit. That she didn’t exist.

She heard another car in the parking lot. Footsteps on the paths. Charlie turned invisible, not raising her head up even as another sense told her who it was.

Monroe prowled the markers for minutes before he found her. He read the name on the headstone and sighed.

“How are you?” he asked.

She shrugged, invisible.

“Charlie, I know you’re there,” he said gently. He sat behind her on the cold wet ground. “What’re you doing?”

Charlie let herself become visible again. She smiled. “I’m making you a crown, Your Highness.”

She placed the woven band of dandelions on his brow. It was gnarled and ugly and fluffy with yellow flowers. A dry smile curled his lips.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She ripped fistfulls of weeds out and continued to braid them. Monroe carried the same silent understanding that Red and Rhys came with. But he had never come. For some reason, Charlie felt the dam open. “My mother taught me to make them,” she muttered.

Every free patch of green grew a dozen. Monroe ripped himself a bunch.

“How do you do it?” he asked.

Charlie showed him. He wasn’t very good or very fast, but he was thorough, and he almost got it down. Even yellow and not gold, the crown she had given him caught her eye.

“Did Jan kill your friend?” she asked. She thought she knew the answer and wanted to remind him the price of that yellow crown.

Monroe’s fingers slowed. “I don’t think so. I asked him. He said no. He seemed upset.” His brow furrowed. “Somehow, the world seems to want Jan’s plans to come to fruition. And it hasn’t asked me.”

Oh.

“You don’t sound happy about that,” she said uncertainly.

“I’m not,” he admitted. “A third faction of Camarilla? Camarilla only in name, fueled by Anarchs with an autarkis prince?”

“Bastard Prince,” she corrected.

Monroe dropped the dandelions, his fingers sticky with yellow juices. “Yes. That. I — I never thought I would be  _ given _ a title like that. Imagine few princes have been.” He rubbed his fingers off on his jeans and shook his head. “Enough of that. I came to be here for you.”

“Maybe letting me be there for you  _ is _ being here for me,” said Charlie distantly.

“I know you’ve struggled,” he said, “and I haven’t been there. Hopefully, now, things will change. A court can bear my burdens of the realm— Is that funny?”

Charlie snorted and couldn’t stop snickering. “Yeah. Kind of. In case you haven’t noticed, this is  _ America _ .”

Monroe smiled. It tasted wrong. She ripped a dandelion into confetti. Wet, it smeared.

“I let Jesse escape,” she whispered. “I… I went to Ashley.”

He didn’t so much as breathe. “I know.” He paused. “Thank you for telling me. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help, then.”

“I don’t expect you to apologize or nothing,” she muttered. “If you didn’t try to kill people who hurt us, you wouldn’t be you.”

He sighed, but it didn’t sound like relief. “Tell me, what troubles you that you come here so much?”

She did her best to take a step back. She took too many and felt herself drift, outside her life. And it sharpened, too clear. “I’m trying to find a balance between being an inhuman predator and… me.”

Her chain had almost finished and she took Monroe’s line to add to it. It became a necklace, a yellow-gold chain, dingy mustard in the night.

He sighed. “You told me before you don’t think you’re a good person. I was hoping being more involved would let you see the truth. As a kindred, you’re among the best of us.”

She scowled. “How?”

“Because you still want to be good. Most don’t care. They just live.” He resettled on the grass, closer, and Charlie didn’t move. “The night comes and it twists what we do, but it doesn’t have to twist  _ us _ .”

“You saying I’m better for having been through shit?”

“No,” he said. “Sometimes suffering is just suffering. It doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t build character. It only hurts. But you will win, against your Beast. And I need you to know that I am here.”

Monroe’s voice was soft and intense, and so far off the mark of what Charlie needed it almost wrung tears from the stone in her chest.

“Thing is,” she said matter-of-factly, “I don’t really know who I am.”

“It might benefit you to find out who you want to be now, rather than who you were before,” he said, looking at her headstone she shared with her mother.

Charlie put the necklace around Monroe. It added to the crown. He didn’t resist, but he did lift a flower to inspect it. He looked ridiculous, but she liked it.

“Who do you want to be?” she asked.

Monroe didn’t like the answer, even as he said it. “I want to be powerful,” he said. “Long before I was sired. I didn’t want it for myself, to secure my own position. I never wanted to be a prince, to work politics in shadows and destroy invisible enemies. I never wanted to be a general, ordering deaths of people better than myself and playing war like a table game.”

Charlie shrugged, disappointed. “I can do that, too. I want to be happy. But I don’t want to be a clown and wear white makeup. I don’t want to be a librarian and be quiet and alone. I don’t want to be a journalist because that’s not me anymore.”

Monroe raised an eyebrow.

“I wanted to be a librarian growing up,” she explained.

He reconsidered and continued, more slowly. “I’m not talking about jobs. I wanted to provide, to make sure those who followed me would be better off than I had been. I wanted to protect them, to know them, help them better themselves.” He lifted the dandelion necklace, very carefully. “I… I wanted to be a father. I know I fall short of this, often, and sometimes I forget, but when I keep it in mind, I know who I am.”

Charlie stared, feeling impossibly small and weak. She stood on the edge of a cliff, the wind pushing at her back to fall off. 

“Everyone wants to feel needed,” he continued. “We all want to know we belong, somewhere. You can be a teacher, a revolutionary, a guide, a lover, a mystic, an optimist—”

“A daughter,” she said. She felt the tears in her voice. “Could I be a daughter? Protected, and safe, with someone to go to. A family. Someone…”

She couldn’t finish it. She had never had a father. She had heard him call her his childe so many times, but that was a vampire thing. From the first night they met, he had taken responsibility for her, a ward and charge and lost fledgling. He had chastised her. Helped her. Held her. He wore her ugly crown and necklace of dandelions. She had put a crown on him. Again. Hers. 

Monroe lost his train of thought as it careened off the rails and into a neighbouring field. “You could,” he said, as if he could scarcely believe it.

“Both of us,” said Charlie, “no more killing, no more vengeance. No Disneyland. No William E Smith. Nothing. Just, finding a way to live.”

Monroe looked pained. “Charlie, I’m their prince, now. LA might go to war—”

“Then, you call us all back to Blue Moon. We make the decision together. We all will bear that sin.”

“There’s something else we could do. We could leave.” He reached out, but his hand hovered, uncertain of what it was supposed to do. In the end, it fell. “It never even occurred to you, did it?” He smiled, proud.

“No,” she said, smiled. “I guess you’re stuck with me. I’ll stay until the rain ends.”

Monroe frowned and looked up, but the sky was clear and cloudless. Starry. 

They weren’t hugging people. Neither of them were. But Charlie felt it anyway, the deep unspoken need — answered and met — between them in the silence. And red, like the stars above, the string tightened and thickened.


	51. Epilogue 2: Bloodlines

Monroe had witnessed coronations for new princes. As Ventrue, even barred from the meetings of the clan, he had taken part in the festivities. They were grim affairs, solemn, involving recitations of history and oaths to the clan and Directorate. As many princes, stewards, and lord princes as the Camarilla contained, only Ventru was the King. It was a holdover of ancient history, but Ventrue and their Camarilla prided themselves on traditions. Crowns were, of course, forged. Toreador and Tremere princes fancied slips of jewel-encrusted gold on their brow. Ventrue wore iron, same as their signet rings. The heavier, harder, coarser metal belied its burden.

No one had told the Anarchs this, of course.

Justin had texted Monroe an hour ago. Rubio had opened Medusa again and it was packed. Monroe knew he would have to make an appearance.

For now, he enjoyed his peace. He lay in bed with Hawthorne, stroking her thick dark hair.

“I should go,” she said, breaking their heavy silence.

“I know.”

She rose. He found her clothes and helped her dress. She argued against him. She didn’t need it. He did. He did his best to memorise the feel of her skin, the curve of her limbs, the flick of her wist which was as much of a clever smirk as her lips. They had packed a single suitcase hours ago.

Monroe had resisted calling Jan as long as he could. However, he had needed to know if he had been responsible for Barty’s death. The acid in his voice made Monroe believe him. Plans lay astray. Monroe’s coronation was unexpected, unwanted, yet another wrench. Another night, he could face how he had yet again disappointed Jan.

Jan took a margin of his frustrations out on him, in his right.  _ Your childe is ready for her tour. Send her. _

Had they been just men, Monroe might’ve argued. This was not the right time. The Valley was dangerous, potentially by Victoria Ash — the new prince. Monroe needed his allies kept close.

But they were not just men. They were Ventrue. Jan an archon, Monroe a prince. And Monroe owed a debt.  _ Of course, sir. Tomorrow night, sir. _

Neither Monroe nor Hawthorne cried. It was not in their natures. She did her own makeup, straightening her hair. Eventually, there was nothing more to do to fill time.

Ritter had somehow beaten some sense back into Dawson, after his horrified depression upon learning of vampires, and, as Monroe had once threatened, Dawson would become Hawthorne’s responsibility. He waited in the car to take her to Jan’s house in the Valley.

When it was time, Monroe walked her to the door and planted a chaste kiss on her lips. She slipped him tongue, pressing the length of her body against him in urgency. Gently but firmly, he set her down, disappointed.

“Let’s not make it harder than this has to be,” he whispered.

Hawthorne grimaced, but she was no stranger to hardship. “I’ve left you something. A mixed tape. It’s in the CD player in the living room.”

Monroe smiled, struggling to stop his laughter. A small forgotten part of his heart glowed.

“What?” she asked.

Monroe took a CD from the end table by the door and pressed it into her hands. “I made you one, too.”

Hawthorne laughed and, once she started, he joined in. It was so ridiculous but, on a second thought, he couldn’t have imagined how else they would’ve said goodbye.

Her hand still stroked his face and he leaned into the touch.

“I want you to remember,” he said, “there will always be a part of me in you.”

Her hand stilled before withdrawing.

“What? Did I say something?” he asked, confused.

“No. No,” said Hawthorne with a sigh. “You’re right, of course. Your blood — I am your childe. The Beast, it has your voice.”

“I meant it more in a romantic sort of way,” he said uselessly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to leave things like this.”

Hawthorne kissed him again, more appropriately. “We left things by leaving each other mixed tapes. Laughing. This evening, you tolerated my complaints of sixteenth century stone choices in Florecian architecture. We spent hours abed.” Her smile wavered. “And, you are right — romantically and practically. I will carry you with me.”

He kissed her again.

“Now, give me Ritter,” she prodded.

He chuckled against her lips. “Not a chance.”

“Dawson is worse than useless,” she complained, pulling back.

“Are you worried about your safety?” he asked. Surely, she didn’t. If Jan let harm come to a childe in his protection, there would be far worse consequences than Monroe’s wrath. It was Jan’s own dignitas. 

“My sanity,” she said. “Ritter’s a good man. We were friends for years, while you and Pieterzoon plotted New York.”

Monroe had forgotten that. “Maybe I’ll send him to you at a later date.”

“Meaning ‘never’.”

“Jan will have you a long time,” he said hollowly. “Months. A year, two or five, if he feels the need.”

Hawthorne’s hand tightened on his lapel. “I won’t run away, but I will make my feelings clear: if he has me for more than six months, I will diablerize him myself.”

Monroe was starkly remembered of Jan’s warning, that Hawthorne would learn from him and he couldn’t choose what she did. “Please don’t remind me of my… moral failings.”

She smirked. “Hard not to, all that black in your aura. You’re basically a zebra.” She made a honking noise, presumably the sound zebras made.

He groaned. “Alright. Have fun. You’re Jan’s problem now. Try not to get yourself killed.”

“I’ll try,” she said, doing her best to match his nonchalance. “Have fun being a Bastard and a Prince. Try not to get yourself killed.”

Hawthorne left without another word or glance. Monroe waited in the door until Dawson drove out of sight. It left him cold, though not as broken as when Hawthorne had left him. She would return this time. Jan would ensure she survived. The condition in which she returned in — her personality, her priorities, her humanity — was up for bets. Neither could promise exclusivity, either. Fledglings and even neonates remained vulnerable to seduction as an easy form of manipulation. Monroe couldn’t imagine Jan teaching her that, but it remained a possibility. He pushed at the feelings he had for her. For now, they would be buried.

Monroe had a party to attend. Sans crown.

Though he had been quite tempted to keep Charlie’s offering.

Medusa had a new attitude. Monroe wouldn’t trust a party with Blue Moon still under construction, but Rubio had done his best to transform the dining room into a dance floor. Electric candles flickered as grinding music blared. More than anything, the copious amounts of blood and alcohol helped. Monroe took a few token drinks, but couldn’t get into the mood of it all.

His appearance made, he retired to a small dark corner of the other dining room. This one retained its white table clothes — and tables, for that matter. The lights were even dimmer. They looked more like candles glinting off rough stone and wood. It brought to mind a different era, when the world was smaller, darker, and colder. The Camarilla would approve.

Rubio found him soon after. “Not in the mood?”

“I appreciate the effort, but this is  _ of _ me, not  _ for _ me,” said Monroe.

Rubio nodded, understanding. He dressed well, as he tended to in Medusa, though his tie was a touch off-center. “I figured that.” He licked his fangs apprehensively. “A package was left for you. Do you want it?”

Absently, Monroe nodded. Rubio brought with him a bottle of spirits and a glass. 

Monroe caught Rubio’s eye and, confused, he stayed a moment.

“Do you think I have bad judgement?” asked Monroe calmly.

Rubio snorted and laughed. “This is a rough night. Just, have a couple drinks and sleep it off. You’ll be better in the morning.”

Monroe couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Rubio’s hand squeezed his shoulder and he returned to the party, leaving the package behind. Once Monroe spotted the label and size, he did his best to ignore it.

Instead, he considered a lighter. Several nights ago he had found something in a jacket. Something forgotten for weeks. Rather, he had preferred to forget it. When he and Barty had gone to the race track, now lost to him deep in the Valley, Barty had shoved his packet of cigarettes in his pocket.

Monroe clicked the lighter and considered the fear in a detached way. Certainly, he was afraid. A wrong gust of wind would kill him. The orange light flashed on the stone, warming his fingers. Off. On. Off.

The packet had been crumbled, but the cigarettes within looked alright.

The party raged thirty feet away. His party. His coronation. Monroe wondered what Barty’s had looked like. The first one, as baron of the peninsula, and the second, when he returned the Bay to the Camarilla. Monroe should’ve been there. Barty should’ve been here, abdicated while alive, like he wanted to.

_ You’ll hate it worse than me. _

“You have no idea,” said Monroe darkly. He lit the cigarette a distance from his face and put it to his lips. The ember wasn’t as frightful as he thought. It even had a taste. As LA had proven, licks were desperate to taste something that wasn’t blood.

It tasted like regret.

In Rubio’s cellars, Monroe had secreted the remains of his sire’s bottles. He had taken one out for himself. It wasn’t a celebration. This was no joyous occasion. The victory brought a duty, the worst of all life’s mistresses. 

Of all the people to come looking for him, and of all the people who might’ve ditched a party, Monroe had least expected Ashley Swan. Uninvited, he sat opposite. Somehow, Monroe took comfort from his presence, though he felt no Presence.

Monroe stood and selected another glass from the cabinet. He split the seal and poured the blood between them. Ashley didn’t touch it. His eyes lingered on the cigarettes, the lighter.

Monroe opened the bottle of brown liquor. It smelled like rum, sweet and spiced. Wasted on him, when all he wanted was drink. He reached for another pair of glasses and poured a generous measure.

This, Ashley drank. He clinked glasses and the two downed them. Monroe drank a second before refilling his glass a third time.

“What are we drinking to?” asked Ashley with a smirk. “A dead prince? A new one?”

“Barty was a good man,” said Monroe thickly. “He… He did his best with what he could. He refused to let anyone wallow in misery, always there for a laugh — or a scheme. Thing is, his schemes involved a dog, a taco, and a very drunk human, rather than others’ lives. He ended up baron and prince because people loved him, not because he should’ve been.” He could smell the drink, but resisted. “I never would’ve survived the Revolts, but I should’ve come back. I should’ve stayed. I should’ve been there, for him. He… We were good friends.”

Monroe drank most of the blood in a single swallow. It burned, but not in any pleasurable way. It ached, scorching.

Tentatively, Ashley tasted his own drink. Knowing eyes found him. “You were lovers.”

“He…” What was there to lie about? “He wasn’t interested.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. It even sounded genuine.

Monroe took a deep breath and set aside his drink. “Do you think I have bad judgement?”

Ashley played with the arms of his sunglasses in his lap. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “You make decisions without consulting people. People, who might’ve had viewpoints you benefited from.” He drank. “You were afraid of what others would think. That you’re no different than the rest of us. Weak.”

Ashley told him the truth. That was valuable. The humility that burned like the sun on his collar. And he knew him. So valuable. Every other office served the people. Even the prince. They deserved to be chosen by the people. Monroe realised he came to the end of the cigarette and left it in the ashtray. He offered Ashley one, but he rejected.

“What’s in the box?” asked Ashley.

“I don’t want to know,” said Monroe, “but I have a lot of terrible ideas.”

Ashley stood to get a better look at it. The brown box was large, but easily carried. It also smelled — of old blood, corruption. He noticed the same thing Monroe had, that it had no packing label. It had been hand-delivered. Ashley sliced through the tape with a sharp nail and reached in, confused. He pulled out what looked, at first, like a yellow blanket. The smell strengthened. It wasn’t a blanket at all, but a fur. Shining and gold and bloodstained. A lion’s pelt. It had not been tanned and preserved like a hunting trophy, but butchered. Recently. 

Monroe finished his fourth drink and shut his eyes. The pelt lingered in his mind’s eye. “Barty had a prized pet. A lion named Mithras.”

Ashley pushed his way through the pelt, but there was nothing else.

“I think she did this,” said Monroe. “Your sire.”

Ashley threw the box aside. “Sounds like her. And now she’s prince. Like she’s always wanted.”

“I’m going to kill her,” he said casually.

“I am,” corrected Ashley. He smiled, fangs long and elegant. “You can get a shot in, if you want.”

“A slap.”

“Whatever gets you off, Your Highness.”

The ironic title had become fact. It unsettled Monroe. He grimaced. “I truly have done wrong by a lot of people,” he said. “I did not deserve what Justin Merlot said about me.”

Ashley stopped, drink half-raised to his lips. He set the glass down, eyes narrowed. “You didn’t plan that show,” he said in a different voice.

“No,” said Monroe honestly. Even thinking about it threatened to overwhelm him. He sighed. “I used you. I manipulated you. I attempted to bond you. I gave you all the responsibility and duties of the position without its tools or power.”

“What do you — No,” he said in disbelief. He smiled, searching for the punchline. “You’re kidding me.”

“Don’t you want to be seneschal?” asked Monroe.

The word didn’t even crack Ashley’s suspicion.

“I don’t trust it,” he said. “Why me? Call yourself prince and you’ll have Abrams and Nines putting aside decades of hate to knock that crown off your head. Orion would be better. Azalea would let it be known you aren’t making any proper Tower with a shadow.”

Monroe had considered Azalea, but her answer to his question had been unsatisfactory as well. She hesitated, refusing to lie to a superior but also unable to insult him. Monroe had relieved her of the moral conundrum and left. Rubio, as Monroe knew, considered him too much a friend. Orion would, in time, become Brujah Primogen. He didn’t have the ambition or perspective or age.

“I know you,” said Monroe instead.

Ashley sneered. “Bullshit. What the fuck do you think you know about me?”

In the sneer, suddenly, he could see the insecurities. Ashley feared he would be killed as seneschal, but also that he would become his sire. That he would fail himself. In a terrible moment, Monroe saw himself in the sneer, the sunglasses, the lipstick and baroque blazer. Truly, he had always been right.

“Where should I start?” asked Monroe softly. “You are running from a past in the Camarilla that won’t let you go. You choose and sire fledglings who need you and you do right by them, to atone for your past and present. You know the value of being useful to power. You have your ways of being valuable when, by all rights, you should be forgotten. You are ruthless, and cruel, and selfish.” He smiled and Ashley’s demeanor faltered. “How could I not know you?”

Ashley finished his drink, distraught. “I wish I had never given you that damned oracle.”

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “For accepting the position, Master Seneschal.”

“I haven’t said yes,” he said, but there was no teeth to the snap. No bite. It was the last defence of his Anarch ego.

“You will.”

Ashley slunk lower in his chair, pretending to be incredibly interested in Rubio’s sculptures and mosaics. He mulled over the implications and offer. Quietly, Monroe drank. He lit up again. By the end of his third cigarette, the fear had abated. 

Without a word, Ashley stood and took his glass of Fowler’s blood with him.

For the first time in months, Monroe felt at peace.

  
  


Zari hated the theatre, but it was LaCroix’s favourite elysium. The stage looked pretty grand and impressive, but, looking over the paltry domain, the rows upon rows of empty seats, it only emphasised how small and weak Westside really was. Malkavians. Toreador. A handful of Ventrue and Tremere. No way would they have been able to destroy the Sabbat like the Valley coordinated. 

Ashley hadn’t called to tell her. Instead, Jeanette knew.  _ How _ Jeanette knew, whether it was Malkavian Knowing, or Ashley, or another pawn wrapped around her finger, Zari didn’t know. LaCroix had almost pulled out his hair when he heard that. He had anticipated the Valley, Downtown, and Switzerland battling it out for months. Suddenly, there was no time anymore. Things needed to move faster. 

Then, quite suddenly, LaCroix had calmed. The Valley Prince was dead. No suspects. Suddenly, Nines Rodriguez had no master. He was up for sale. Him and a few other Downtown Anarchs had agreed to a tour of the Westside Camarilla. Zari didn’t trust it. With the Sabbat gone, why would Nines go looking for Camarilla power? Something else plagued him. The prince had the same thoughts, but couldn’t spare an agent to investigate.

In the middle of it all, Noel had died. Peacefully, in his sleep. Zari had broken her promise and visited him several times towards the end. He became less coherent but, even not knowing who she was, he took comfort from her. Zari had cried thick tears when the news found her. The funeral was in the day, as well. Mercurio attended for her and they spent as long as they could reminiscing. The cruel unfairness of it all made her feel cursed. Mercurio dug in the fresh wound, searching for relief and closure. Somehow, Zari had begun to find it. She hadn’t even thought it possible. The Giants and Raptors game became a private joke, comforting in its reference.

Zari had also done as she had promised. Charles Owaine had Embraced a childe. She thought it was never going to happen. Locking eyes with Darsh Amble across the theatre, she winked.

LaCroix went on his rambling speech, largely for Nines’ benefit, extolling the might of the Westside and what an alliance between them could mean. Vague terms, going on about their  _ society _ , as if LaCroix shared a damn thing with someone like Nines. As demonstration, he planned for Owaine’s execution. A Ventrue, killed for a Brujah’s entertainment. A symbol.

Owaine had knew he had fucked up bad. Unforgivable kind of bad. He had misunderstood the prince’s wishes, acted against the Traditions, and now he paid the price. And he blamed it on himself.

Nines, for whom this entire display of power had been orchestrated, had not been impressed. Instead, he snarled. Zari recognised Velvet Velour and wondered if she had came in, secretly, as eyes for Isaac Abrams or for Ashley.

The Sheriff bore a massive sword and took the head in a single grisly slice. Owaine crumpled into Final Death. LaCroix stepped across the ashes as he continued.

The fledgling, a big Black man with a shaved head, struggled against LaCroix’s ghouls. What a shame. He was quite handsome. Tall, dashing, a razor’s edge of beard. Still, a sacrifice of this entire plan.

Zari raised her eyes to the balcony. Strauss showed no outward sign of displeasure, but the stony stoic glare behind tiny red glasses was enough. Whatever plans he had, they had been interrupted with Owaine’s death. But Owaine was merely a tool, a pawn between bigger things. The game went on.

It sucked. Gangs worked the same way, only with higher body counts. The Anarchs weren’t really any different, in their own ways.

“This leads us back to the fate of the ill-begotten progeny,” said LaCroix. He seemed utterly oblivious to how arrogant he sounded. “Without a sire, most childer are doomed to walk the earth, never knowing their place, their responsibility, and, most importantly, the laws they must obey.”

“This is bullshit!”

Nines Rodriguez, no longer content to be an honoured guest, burst from his seat in a curse. The Anarchs next to him restrained him from rushing the stage. It was a close thing, though.

LaCroix tilted his head. Zari could smell the gears in his head turning. “If Mr Rodriguez would let me finish,” he said irritably, “I have decided to let this kindred live.”

This was news to everyone. 

Zari exchanged a look with Therese behind LaCroix’s back. She hadn’t had any idea either. The domain and guests murmured appreciatively. Slowly, Nines managed to sit down with another snarl of disgust — but not rebellion.

The fledgling, most of all, seemed thrilled to hear this news, though no less frightened.

“He shall be instructed in the ways of our kind and be granted those same rights,” continued LaCroix, heedless. His voice narrowed. “Let no one say I am unsympathetic to the plights and causes of this community.”

The ghouls dragged the fledgling to his feet, though he stood at well over six feet. He straightened his button-down like nothing had happened. Definitely Ventrue.

Nines and the Anarchs stood before LaCroix had dismissed them, sealing the decision. Nines would return to Downtown, the alliance broken before they could even get to a table. LaCroix’s bitterness bled into his farewells.

“Clean up this mess,” said Therese, sliding a heel through the ashes that had once been Owaine.

The ghouls bumbled in a haste to obey, searching for brooms.

Zari took off after LaCroix as he stormed off stage.

“That was quite well done,” he said stiffly. The praise came freely, though his mind was occupied elsewhere. “None dared argue against the execution. His owed boons shall transfer to his eldest childe, whom I believe resides still in Cleveland. She shall have to be contacted.”

“I will,” said Zari, jotting it down quickly. She would have to ask Mercurio about finding Owaine’s eldest childe. “And, thank you.”

“Do not thank me for telling a truth,” he said. “It is the least I can do.”

Therese sped up to join them. “What of the Anarchs, sir?” 

“We will have to wait for a new opportunity to bring Rodriguez and his miscreants to heel,” said LaCroix unwillingly. That, clearly, was what weighed on his mind. He had hoped the Downtown Anarchs submitting to him would’ve given him greater legitimacy. The Valley Prince dead, surely the archons searched for a new pawn, Strauss refitting his plans.

A new Owaine.

Zari didn’t relish the thought. Though, at least, Monroe had shown his true colours at last. A prince. She could barely imagine it and, yet, she could. What she couldn’t imagine was how his domain hadn’t lynched him yet. He must’ve been crueler than LaCroix.

“What about this fledgling?” she asked.

“Deal with him,” said LaCroix flippantly.

“How so?”

They had come to the end of the backstage hallways. Only the exit door into the parking lot remained. Aside from the Sheriff and Therese, another stood with Zari and the prince. The fledgling. He was even taller than Zari had first thought, and she was a tall woman. He had a bulk and strength, though she had heard from Owaine he was a basketball player. He also wore an expression of naked fear.

LaCroix’s eyes searched him, clearly trying to figure out the answer to her own question. Something dawned in his eyes. “Your sire — tragic, my apologies,” he said.

The fledgling nodded, though he leaned away from LaCroix’s intense eyes. “It’s okay. I… uh… Didn’t know the guy, really.”

“You see, there is a strict code of conduct we all must adhere to if we wish to survive,” he said. “If someone —  _ anyone _ — breaks these laws, they undermine the well-worn fabric of our centuries’ old society. Please. Understand my predicament.” He shook his head. “Allowing you to live makes me directly responsible for your subsequent behaviour. So, what I am offering is not generosity but an opportunity to transcend the fate you sire should’ve condemned you to.”

The fledgling, still more human than vampire, looked uncertainly around. He had the smarts to understand his place, but not what happened. “Thank you,” he said uneasily.

“You will follow this lady — Zari of Clan Toreador, Herald of Los Angeles, of the blood of the Amble Dynasty — to Santa Monica, wherein your labours shall be detailed,” said LaCroix.

“He will?” snapped Zari. Later, she could be touched by LaCroix’s flattering if factual introduction.

LaCroix glared at her. “He will be Mercurio’s problem. Do not think I am hoisting a lost fledgling onto you.”

“I’m not gonna be a problem,” said the fledgling. He raised his hands. “Sir.”

Zari grimaced. Few, truly, got away with just calling LaCroix merely  _ sir _ . “This is Sebastian LaCroix of the Clan of Kings, Ninth of the Line of Tiamat, Prince of Los Angeles, Warden of Westside.” She added in a whisper, “Your Highness.”

“What, really?” asked the fledgling with a disgusted look. Very twenty-first century of him.

LaCroix grew dangerously still.

Zari put an arm around the fledgling and started to lead him back down the hall. “I’ll deal with him, Your Highness,” she called.

The humour had done its intended job. LaCroix did not chuckle, but he lost his anger.

“Really?” the fledgling asked her again. “I mean,  _ really?  _ That spindly yuppie?”

“Yes,” said Zari impatiently. “You got no idea how close you were to having LaCroix just take your head.”

He snorted. “ ‘Off with his head’!”

“Yes, exactly.” She stopped them. They had almost made it back up to the abandoned theatre’s stage. “You watched Owaine lose his head for the crime of siring you—”

“Yeah, by the way—” The fledgling grimaced and lost some of that cucumber cool. “What did he  _ do _ to me?”

Zari softened. She remembered that fear. That dawning horror of finding fangs in the mirror, of hungering for blood all the time, of fearing sunlight and fire. “He made you a vampire,” she said simply. “You’re dead. He killed you. We’re only supposed to make new vampires with permission of — that spindly yuppie. Local prince.”

“Right,” said the fledgling softly. A dazed look took over his eyes. Despite his height and build, he grew smaller. “Right. Okay. I’m a vampire. Of course.”

Zari took his hand and continued. Her own car was parked down the street. They would take the side exit. “I’m his herald, part of his… court, you could say. Like, Speaker of the House.”

The fledgling kept nodding absently.

Out in the theatre, a few cliques continued to gossip by the main exit. Big news, killing a Ventrue like that. Even if it left this fledgling behind, Zari felt pretty pleased about her work on that.

“We’ll get you something to eat at home,” she said. “You can stay in Mercurio’s place, at least for now, until we get you sorted out.”

That jogged him out of his stupor. “You mean… blood?”

Zari stared. “Well, it sounds stupid when you say it like that, but, yeah.”

She shoved the heavy side door open and stepped out into the ugly alleyway. “Los Angeles is a bit of a political shitshow, right now. We got two — now  _ three _ — princes trying to claim the city, one jumped-up Anarch baron, maybe some Sabbat, and whatever goes bump in Downtown’s night.”

The fledgling followed her down through the alleys and behind local businesses. “What about my wife? My kids?”

Zari smoothed her face of emotion. “I’m sorry. The prince will help you fake your death. We can—”

“No,” he said, outraged. “I’m not just leaving her again. I—”

An explosion rocketed through the theatre behind them. The shockwave blew out glass from nearby windows and the entire thing came crashing down. Like a demolition. Zari thought of the vampires still inside. Had everyone gotten out in time? Plumes of dust billowed out from the rubble. Steel spears stuck out from the piles of stones like flagpoles. Some of the nearby buildings had been damaged, too. Car alarms started going off. In the distance, she could hear an unhinged gleeful laugh. And bullets.

Nines was pissed. But he would’ve headed home.

Worse than Nines, then. 

Zari grabbed the fledgling’s hand and ran into the nearest building. The lock broke and she found a staircase. Up. Up to the roof.

“What’s going on?” he cried, following her.

“Sabbat,” she said. “They’re… Oh. Long story. Nasty sons of bitches. Come to put some heat on the weakest prince, now that they lost their land.”

At the next landing, Zari stopped the fledgling with a hand. She indicated for him to duck under the windows, but look through. In the next alley over, a crew of Sabbat piled out of a car screaming rubber. LaCroix had released his Sheriff. When they opened fire, the Sheriff stood and took it. The very air and ground seemed to revolt against the Sabbat, forming shapes. The Sheriff growled and fell onto fours, a wolf, and charged. The battle was over. But there was still gunfire.

“Everyone was here,” said Zari, horror-struck. “Everyone. And — And others. Guests, from other domains. Fuck. If they think LaCroix tried to  _ kill _ them — Fuck.”

It was cleverer of the Sabbat than she thought.

Nevermind trying to get Nines to ally with him, LaCroix would be lucky to not be on every dartboard in Downtown.

“Did that guy just turn into a wolf?” asked the fledgling, voice pitched in fear.

He could share her horror later. For now, Zari had to get him to Santa Monica. She needed to get back to Mercurio.

“Yeah, he did. He does that.”

They slinked carefully through the building, up to the roof. The wind blew stronger up here. Zari could see her silver Mercedes, parked a few blocks away. She pointed it out.

“We’re gonna jump,” she said.

“What?” he demanded. “Off the building?”

“No,” she scoffed. “Just, to the next one. Stay off the street level. If we do, the Sabbat won’t find us. They won’t think to look up.”

The fledgling looked at the gap between the next building, a good ten feet. “You’re joking,” he said flatly.

“Not even a little. Come on,” she said with a wicked smile. “Those stories about vampires flying? It’s because we can jump. Most of us, at least.”

“And if I can’t?” he asked, very sensibly.

Zari glanced over the ledge. Four, five stories. “Then, you’ll survive the fall.”

Zari took off first, a running leap that was more Celerity than Potence. To the human eye, she appeared to simply teleport across the rooftops. She landed hard, her ankles complaining as her knees hit the dusty ground.

The fledgling still stood there, staring blankly. Below them, the Sabbat fought with the Sheriff, other minions of LaCroix’s joining the fight.

“What’s you name?” she called.

“Victor Temple.”

“Come on, Victor,” she called. “Jump.”

Victor was not a small vampire. When he jumped, and then landed, the building cracked under him. When he realised he wasn’t dead — figuratively speaking — he laughed. 

“I — I made it,” he said in disbelief.

Zari grinned. “Not yet. There’s a few more, still.”


	52. Epilogue 3: Teacups

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who’ve gone along with this series, sincerely thank you. I know this is very long and has some pacing issues here and there, but checking after an update and seeing views tick up reliably (even without comments, though those are always appreciated!) is the highlight of my day and I’ll sorely miss it for a while.
> 
> Blackout was the story, primarily, of the whole “personal horror” aspect of VTM. Zari facing her typical life as a Toreador, Jack being a good man in a sea of shit, and Charlie and Monroe dropping Humanity. Respectively, she dropped from 8 to 6, and he dropped from 6 to 4 (oof). Another point on Monroe, there are definitely a lot of moments here that tie back to A Sword to Fall On, his backstory. 
> 
> Daybreak (book 3) will be predominately about the inverse and response to personal horror: forgiveness, redemption, and mercy. The angst gets happy endings. As well as Monroe, Charlie, Jack, and Zari, there will be Ashley and Hawthorne as viewpoints. The end of book 3 corresponds to the end of Bloodlines. 
> 
> Now, the bad news. Daybreak is entirely plotted, chapter by chapter (60+prologue+epilogue), and is ⅓ finished, 85k. I’ve written about 500k words about these stupid vampires in less than a year, averaging a NaNo month every month. So. I need a little break. I’ve spent the last month writing a Baldur’s Gate 2 personal horror longfic (because I clearly only know one genre). I will start posting Daybreak before it’s finished (probably in March), but only one chapter a week. When I get back into vampire mode and writing again, I’ll likely kick it up because I don’t want to be posting these things for years.
> 
> I will not leave this hanging or unfinished. See you soon.

The very matter of his continued survival was an insult. The highest, in fact, Isaac Abrams considered. He lived and his will extended only upon the subjugation of others. Though he liked to think he and a few of his men survived the purge of Burbank and Glendale due to his razor sharp wit and cunning, he knew elsewise. The Camarilla allowed him to escape. They had him, a fish on their hook. Even now, Isaac could feel it in his cheek, scraping against his fang. As though sport, they ripped him out of his waters and then thrown him back in. 

Mercy. The gravest of all insults.

The Camarilla thought him a weak fool. 

Monroe, though, was far worse.

Monroe was what Anarchs became when they forgot who fed them. He bit the hand, spurned the feed, and seized a crown to gnaw upon instead — forgetting, of course, that the Camarilla held all the cards. To join them was to submit oneself to the hierarchy. It would never last. The temporal power would be naught but smoke and mirrors. 

That none had immediately taken action upon his pitiful coronation spoke to a far more worrying fact.

“He’s quite dashing,” hummed Velvet dreamily. A finger twirled in ruby red locks.

It drew Isaac from his brooding. “What?”

“The Bastard Prince.” She blinked at him, not a thought in her mind. “That is what tonight is about, isn’t it? Oh, Isaac, you should’ve seen! It was just like a piece from a film.”

“Hush, sweetling. Remember, still, he is not what he appears. Don’t you remember, that poor shadowchilde you found? What a monster Swan is, to chain such a neonate.”

Velvet chewed on her lip, but she nodded eagerly enough. “Ashley’s not like that, I told you already. He’s… It must’ve been the prince.”

Isaac dismissed Velvet Velour, though he appreciated her beauty. He appreciated all beauty, from the grandfather clock to the crossed katanas on the wall (from several of Kurosawa’s films). Velvet was little different. She also was often as silent.

Isaac crossed the main room to the red armchair she sat upon. He stroked her cheek and she leaned adoringly into his hand. Her beauty belied a far greater aspect of her: her blood. Ashley Swan had sired her, nearly five decades ago when the wretch had first come to LA. For years, Isaac fought a tireless crusade against the rose. It was business, never personal. Then, he had dared to slide the still-lingering Italian mafia from Isaac’s grasp. Swan had perverted them, used them as common criminals, like any racial gang. Isaac was quite fond of trophies, as any of his men could say. The west coast was so sparse in stylish old gangsters; the mafia had been his last chance. Yet, the fates had decided in his own favour when he swayed the beautiful pink Velvet Velour. It made the years of anger worth it.

Victory was sweet. Isaac was beginning to forget what it tasted like.

“Tonight is not only about the Bastard,” said Isaac gravely, “but about the treachery of Westside. I made a mistake, sending my most precious childe into that den of snakes.”

Velvet had returned inconsolable and bleeding.

She glanced to her hands, which balled into fists. She jutted her chin at him. “I survived. And, I’m not so sure it was LaCroix’s men, I—”

“Shh,” said Isaac gently. He placed a finger on her plush lips. “There is no need to worry yourself about the details, my sweet. The facts remain. I sent you as an envoy into Westside. LaCroix let his guests be attacked. Who did the assaulting is irrelevant.”

Velvet furrowed her brow. “I don’t think—”

“You don’t think,” he agreed. “There’s no need to burden yourself with thoughts. Let me handle things. The world is a dark and dangerous place.”

She sighed and curled deeper into her chair, a tangle of lean long limbs. She wore a bright pink babydoll trimmed with black lace. With her unladylike posture, a small slip of pink silk panties peeked from between her legs.

“Clive,” called Isaac. He knew the man would hear him. “Trouble Ivan for some refreshment, if you would. We will be having a guest, shortly.”

It took a minute, but Isaac’s favourite bodyguard appeared with a tray as only Ivan prepared them. It was a towering silver contraption, layered not with pastries and tea sandwiches but artfully arranged flower blossoms and teacups. The captured scent of the flowers mingled with the varied blood from the teacups. Blood gathered during fear, love, sex, hatred, from virgins and children and the elderly. The symphony was hypnotising.

Isaac wondered if Gary Golden would be impressed. He heard interesting things about the Nosferatu’s proclivities. Of course, it mattered not.  _ Isaac _ was entertained. That was all that mattered, ultimately.

Isaac settled himself down and perused a new screenplay an agent had sent him for review. When Clive opened the backdoor and welcomed the creature, Isaac cast his senses far beyond the mundane. Instantly, the blood magic across his study was visible. Nets and lines and primal symbols. 

Gary Golden did not come under the cloak of Obfuscate. And — Isaac checked twice to make sure — neither did any other. The Nosferatu wore a three-piece black tuxedo, white gloves, and a bowtie. On any other, he might’ve looked like a maitre’d. Isaac found it difficult to look past the hideous curse. Still, he smiled like a gentleman and offered his hand.

“Mr Golden, I’m honoured you came.”

“I am always willing to pay attention to things that interest me,” said Golden. “And you interest me quite a lot.”

“Why’s that?”

The two of them sat. Golden picked a daisy off the display and began plucking the petals off and chewing them.

“Because you’re sending out feelers, boss,” he said ironically. “When the Bastard called a sudden meeting, you sent the childe.” He nodded towards Velvet, who hadn’t left. Isaac had no doubts as to her loyalty — though he did rather doubt her ability to follow the conversation. “I sent mine. When Westside made a carte blanche invitation, I sent Mitnick. He said he saw a girl in pink lingerie.”

“It is good to know what your enemies do,” said Isaac calmly.

“The Bastard’s your enemy.”

“Everyone who is not me is my enemy.”

Golden nodded with respect. “Personally, I don’t believe a damn word that’s come out of that cape’s mouth.”

“Monroe?” asked Isaac, but Golden spat out a mouthful of chewed up flower petals and greyish spittle on his carpet. Isaac’s nose wrinkled.

Golden wiped his mouth and selected a new flower. A red rose. “Monroe,” he confirmed. “I was here those first bloodsoaked nights of the Revolts. San Diego native, I am. Anarchs have their troubles. Camarilla, too. But I’ve never seen anything go downhill so fast since that blue blood got here. MacNeil. Garcia. Camarilla. Ace of Spades.”

Isaac selected a teacup for himself and decided to ignore Golden’s continued flower-munching and spitting. Gracious. The virgin blood settled his outrage.

“Salvador came to me a year ago,” said Isaac airily. “He asked me — nay, begged — to return to Hollywood. I told him it simply wasn’t possible. You know the fickle nature of modern day cinema. Hollywood is a relic, a tourist trap. Burbank—”

“Get back to Garcia,” grunted Golden.

Isaac scowled. “He told me Monroe was a plant sent by… anyone. I heard it a dozen times. Each time, he seemed to discover a new name. Garcia had his childer tracing Monroe’s past. Prince Garlotte of Baltimore. Prince Calebros in New York. The Ventrue Justicar, the Ventrue archons — the list was endless.”

Golden tapped a long grey nail on the silver tray. The sound was horrific. “There’s a Ventrue archon in the Valley.”

“There is?”

“Hmm.” Golden sat back, small grey-black eyes working as he thought. “Interesting.”

“You do like interesting things,” said Isaac, sipping from his teacup.

“I do.”

Golden gave up on flowers and took his own drink. He gripped the teacup like a coffee mug and chugged it nearly as fast. He chose another.

“This is nothing new to you,” said Isaac tiredly.

Golden chuckled. “You will have a hard time finding something I  _ don’t _ know.”

Isaac leaned forward confidentially and whispered, “Fortier was LaCroix’s sire.”

Golden arched an eyebrow.

“You didn’t know that,” said Isaac, triumphant.

“I did. I’m surprised  _ you  _ knew that. How?”

Isaac deflated somewhat, but he had other tidbits to harness Golden’s attention. “Fortier told me, some decades ago, about some wayward childe he had sired in the Camarilla. He always feared him coming to roost.”

“Interesting.” Golden licked the inside of the teacup with a thick slab of a tongue. “I’m sorry I’m not as dastardly subtle as a high clan. Why did you bring me here? The sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can stop pretending you’re not disgusted by me.”

“Your manners are more repulsive than the curse,” said Isaac with a curl of his lip.

“Maybe my manners  _ are _ the curse. What do you want, Abrams?”

“The same you do,” said Isaac. “MacNeil had this wrong. The Brujah know how to rebel, but they have no idea what to do with freedom once they’ve won it. We did not cast the Camarilla out because MacNeil got smacked around by some ghouls. It was because we wanted what they had. The city. Power. Autonomy. We had to take it from them. And I will take it again. I refuse to lose it and return to the days of serfdom.”

Golden tapped his face as he thought. “Hmm. Interesting.”

“Do you know Westside is looking for spies?” asked Isaac. He felt his dead heart flutter with excitement. Golden was almost his. “Did you know LaCroix is scared of his Tremere Regent — who is also working with the Valley’s senechal-cum-prince? Did you know LaCroix’s herald is loyal to Monroe?”

Golden sat up, interested. “No. No, I didn’t, boss.” He smiled a mouth of shark-like teeth that belied his irony.

“Let me deal with the Bastard,” said Isaac, leaning forward. “If you approach LaCroix with your childer and the other Nosferatu — don’t lie, I know how tight your clan is in the sewers — he’ll likely make you primogen. Tear it down from inside. Once the Anarchs are ours again, we can tackle the Valley with Rodriguez.”

Golden chuckled. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? The worst thing about the Camarilla. They’re right.” He smiled the same bone-chilling smile. “When you’re a wet dripping fledgling, straight out of your sire’s mouth, every lick looks like a giant viper. Hissing and snapping and showing fangs. And you’re barely out of your egg. One night, because you need to, you kill a little baby snake like yourself. And you get a little bigger. And a little meaner. Kill enough and you start looking on up, eyeing those spots little neonates can have. Whips and heralds and harpies. You grow bigger and badder — and older. And colder. And, one night, those vipers suddenly don’t look so big and bad anymore. In fact, you think you can take them out. Not so much difference, then, you and them.”

Isaac drank his blood in silence, contemplating. It was an analogy he had heard a dozen times. Sometimes it was fish, or snakes, or lions. Always beasts, for that was what vampires were. “I’m not big and bad enough to think I can kill an archon. Not yet.”

“Not unless you want a justicar falling on your head,” said Golden. He shrugged. “But what do I know? I was never nothing in the Tower. I’m still a wee baby snake.”

“Oh, you’re a lot bigger than that,” he said.

Golden smirked, but declined to answer.

Isaac knew he couldn’t demand anything. He had said his piece and either Golden would join him — or he would never leave this house. It was his choice. Isaac didn’t need him, though it would be quite handy, not to mention exciting, to send a Nosferatu spy into Westside. Why, it would almost be like  _ James Bond _ . Golden even wore a suit. Isaac debated if he could encourage a mask as well.

Isaac sipped his blood, considering casting Golden in the role. Repulsive. But necessary. He counseled himself patience.

“I’m going to do you the respect of being honest,” said Golden at last. “I don’t care who rules topside. I don’t. My clan, my childer, we’ve always lived out of the eye of the overlord. Sects don’t matter much to me.”

Isaac sighed and set side his empty teacup. Clive and the boys would hopefully enjoy themselves. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

Golden smiled. “I’m not done, boss. This is business and you aren’t the one who made it personal. Monroe thought he could put me on retainer — like an accountant, a lawyer. I  _ am _ for hire, but I get to choose who hires me.”

Isaac felt a smile curl his own lips. Monroe’s short-sightedness and rash judgment would prove the death of him. “What is your price?”

Golden preened, the very essence of satisfaction seeping out of each and every pore. He thought he had the cards. Isaac let him think it. Ten long crooked fingers tipped with grey nails tapped on the chair arms. His yellow eyes searched the room, as though he might take a katana for his troubles. If he lay a finger on any such item, he would soon learn the weapons were meticulously sharpened and Isaac practiced regularly.

“Information,” said Golden, so predictably. “I get to ask questions, which you answer truthfully, until I’m satisfied.”

Isaac tried to not let himself be ruffled. He was more dignified than that. Regardless, he could always choose to lie.

“Go on.”

“You’ve made it no secret that you loathe Ashley Swan and the feeling, sources say, is mutual,” he said crisply. “Why did you allow him to be your overlord?”

Isaac bristled. This would be worse, even, than he thought.

“Swan was never my overlord. I lay in wait in the grass, until opportunity arrived.” Isaac’s eyes slid to Velvet, still curled in the corner by the bookshelves. “Besides, I already won.”

Golden followed his gaze. “Why did you Embrace Ash Rivers?”

Isaac laughed. “If you have not noticed, I collect movie props. The stunning young actor had no need to die in such an accident.”

“Half-truths are also half-lies,” reminded Golden snidely. “The accident was deliberate. More poisoning than OD. Why did you cause it?”

Isaac lost his humour and found a teacup full of the blood of the depressed. The melancholy was heavy on the tongue, almost sedative. “Swan feeds on humans so rarely. He seduced the actor into this… lifestyle, that is such a death of talent.”

“Embrace Tom Cruise, then,” said Golden with a snort. “Is there anything you’ve done in the last ten years that  _ hasn’t _ been about Swan?”

“Yes,” he said tersely. “I’ve produced a score of films, including a new animation, and mentored talent—”

“In  _ our _ world, Abrams,” said Golden, bored.

“Our world?” he repeated scornfully. “Our world is a distraction, an amusement, a dark and illicit vacation from the true mortal world where art and the soul continue to flourish.”

Wincing as he did so, Golden swiped a clawed hand through his words. “Alright, alright. Damned roses, I get it.”

Jealousy spurned his rage, Isaac knew. Nosferatu, for their cursed form, could never truly interact with humanity the way Toreador did. Isaac showed clemency and restraint, however, by not continuing to torment Golden.

“Have you brought this plan to Rodriguez yet?” asked Golden.

“Not yet. Brujah are like Pandora’s Box. Once they have been unleashed, there is no telling what they might sink their fangs into.” He sipped. “Though, I doubt he will need any persuasion.”

“I don’t know.” He clicked his fangs. “The Tower’s destroyed more than one Movement by giving barons power. What if Monroe offered him Brujah Primogen?”

“He’d spit in his face and mess his carpet,” said Isaac idly. “Rodriguez wants what he has: unilateral power and hero-worship.”

Golden ceded the point. “Still, no MacNeil, no Fortier, no Garica, no Voerman—”

“Three of those four lay at the feet of the Bastard, but, continue.”

“Excluding one of the last old guard Anarchs is bold and stupid.” Golden reconsidered. “Actually, more stupid, boss.”

That grating little name was beginning to make Isaac wish he had sent for Rodriguez instead. Perhaps the Brujah would’ve contain his frenzy this time.

“I am not excluding him anymore than I excluded you whilst I planned this,” he said. “There are many roles to play and it is best to not bring too many Anarchs to the Revolutionary Council.”

“There’s something you get to know as a Nosferatu,” said Golden casually. “Everyone has a price they would willingly pay, even for something they swore was never for sale. Tell me, so I know before I get wrapped up in this with you, what would the Bastard or Valley have to offer you to turn?”

Isaac knew his answer. He had asked himself that question. Once more, he readied himself to commit treason against the Camarilla. Why? What would make it worth it? What could make him stop? Would he do it if Monroe offered him Toreador Primogen, or Warden of Hollywood? No. Autonomy. Freedom. Nothing above him but open sky. The Camarilla would need to make him a prince. An impossibility. 

And not something he could admit to Golden. He would think Isaac held ambitions of stealing Monroe’s crown. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Instead, he lied, and said something else equally as impossible.

“The Camarilla would need to admit and make precautions for Gehenna,” said Isaac.

Golden smirked. “You believe in that garbage?”

“Garbage? How? This world must end sometime. I’ve seen enough of elders of the Sixth and Seventh Generations to know the First must be a terrible force.”

The superstition disgraced him, but it was a mask he was willing to wear. After all, each kindred had to bare the cross of their ancestors. Isaac considered himself quite agnostic to Caine. But the fear lingered in the blood.

Golden accepted the lie. He stood, without ceremony. “I’ll be in touch. Maybe check out Westside tonight.”

Isaac relaxed. Golden would never know how close he was to being a mess of ash on Isaac’s imported Indian rugs. “I trust in your expertise in this area. Clive,” he called. “Show Mr Golden out, please.”

When Golden left, Isaac selected a new teacup and considered his own plan of action. As he paced, he dropped a hand onto the warmed skin and silky hair of Velvet Velour. Petting her calmed them both — not that Velvet needed to be calmed. Any more calm and the girl might slip into torpor.

Finished with his drink, Isaac pulled on a coat.

Velvet bestirred herself. “Where are you going?”

For a moment, he considered not answering. After all, one did not console a beloved dog who whined. Then, again, kindness was so cheap and it bought so much. “To pay a visit to our prince, sweetling.”

Before she could ask any other damning questions, Isaac summoned Clive and made his way to Medusa. The snake’s restaurant felt slippery, unclean. Isaac had grown used to Anarch methods of blowing off steam. But he also knew that, as far as kindred salons went, the thicker that overlayer of good cheer, the darker its underbelly. And between the blasting boomboxes and televisions competing for airspace, the laughing card games, and canoodling in the corner, the underbelly must be dark indeed.

Already, some licks were calling the back dining room  _ the throne room _ . How did they not understand? The tables had been pushed aside, save for one. A dozen chairs pulled around it. The maestro snake himself. Swan. The Lasombra. The Red Witch. Shen. And the Bastard. None bothered to conceal their paperwork, though conversation halted as Isaac neared.

Monroe’s eyes, as always, were the pitiless black holes of any Camarilla prince. A wonder he had only now fashioned himself a crown. “Mr Abrams, what can I do for you?”

Isaac kept the snarl from his lips, but only just. Anarchs desired freedom, equality, democracy, only until they tasted power. He had planned on bowing, to make an example of what sort of era the Bastard ushered in, but he couldn’t give him the pleasure of it.

“Might I have a moment?” he asked instead.

Monroe nodded shortly to Swan, who had looked to his prince with a measure of hate-filled concern. The court stood and left. Monroe found a spare glass in a nearby cabinet and set it down next to the warmed thermos.

Isaac didn’t sit, or drink.

“I’ve heard about you making Swan your seneschal.”

Monroe seemed amused. “Are you surprised?”

“Disappointed.”

“Ah,” he said, understanding. 

Monroe refused to sit so long as Isaac stood, though he reached for his own drink. Blood in warm silver. More and more Camarilla leeched into the city every night. Isaac almost declared his own plans, if only to curse the Bastard out. He gathered himself.

“In my experience,” said Monroe loftily, “everyone requires a purpose. Everyone has an innate need to feel useful, their work valued in their society. Ashley Swan has needed that more than most.”

“The only thing Ashley Swan  _ needs _ is a stake in his heart,” snarled Isaac. His dwindling reserves had been spent.

Monroe seemed to not mind the outburst. In fact, he smiled. He had a cruel vacant smile. “I can’t say I disagree on that front. However, since I don’t intend on killing my people, we both shall suffer his continued existence in dignity. Though, I don’t presume you would spare his blushes and request an audience in private to berate him.”

“No,” said Isaac curtly. “I wanted to discuss another matter.”

“Hmm?” Monroe refilled his drink and, unbidden, filled Isaac’s.

“Toreador Primogen.”

“Toreador Primogen,” he repeated thoughtfully. His eyes were a violation as they crawled over Isaac. “Were it up to me, I would give you the title right now. It might force you and Ashley to have a more civil relationship. That seems to be my one order he struggles to obey.”

“You’re the prince,” said Isaac with a raised eyebrow. He could only imagine Swan appearing at his door, attempting to make nice. Clive would kill him on the spot. Swan was smart to stay away.

“Indeed, but I am not the only one living here. Seneschal is the only position I will appoint with authority, as it operates as my right hand and serves me alone. The others shall face the court of public opinion, much as I recieved my own title.”

“A  _ vote?” _ demanded Isaac, torn between laughter and rage.

“Not quite,” he amended. “I don’t plan on any ballot boxes, not if we can conduct this peacefully. More like a Rant, I suppose, or communal discussion. There are not many Toreadors, but what if they do not want to answer to yourself as primogen? I am not going to play political favours with titles, Mr Abrams.”

Isaac stared. Even abstaining  _ was _ a political favour. It was a favour to Swan. The bulk of the Toreadors in the princedom — the  _ princedom _ , Isaac repeated to himself with revulsion — were Swan’s own brood and those stragglers in mixed-clan gangs loyal to Monroe. Isaac’s Silver Eagles, even, were sired largely by Brujah blood. Almost certainly, the Brujah Primogen would become the head Reaper, a little boy already in the Bastard’s back pocket.

“You won’t hear the end of this,” cursed Isaac.

Impertinent, Monroe sighed and drank. “I do have a sinking feeling that perhaps I won’t.”

Isaac stormed out. He would have to think of a better way to close in on the Bastard, if he couldn’t enter his court. Even so, the court was young. Maybe he could still assert himself as Toreador Primogen. The idea of being given the honour by  _ Swan _ of all people, though, soiled the title and its power. Isaac could have nothing in this life not gifted by another.

Perhaps the only thing Monroe had ever been right about in his wretched life, however, was that he most certainly had not heard the end of this.


End file.
